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THE LAND OF PROMISE 

AN ACCOUNT 

OF THE MATERIAL AND 

SPIRITUAL UNITY OF 

AMERICA 

BY 

RICHARD DE BARY 



*We solemnly and mutually, in the presence 
of God and of one another, covenant and 
combine ourselves together into a civil body 
politic. ' — ''Mayflower ' Compact. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
39 Paternoster Row, London 

NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 
1908 






/2>/3 



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7 



PREFACE 

The need of a change of scene to recover from the 
effects of a breakdown during studies took me for 
several years away from home to some of the less 
bustling scenes of life in the United States. 

I also undertook duties for a while in the dry 
and sunny climate of the Rocky Mountain area, and 
subsequently visited the Pacific Coast and New 
England. Before leaving America I spent a rather 
adventurous year in New York. 

This book is the result of an attempt to write of 
these scenes, and of the people and their ideals, in 
that perspective of the history of mankind in which 
the United States are the Romance of a New World, 
associating new faiths and ideals and experiences 
with a new material occupation of territory. 

A New World here mostly means a new experience 
in the attempt to solve problems of life common to 
all the world, but here adventured upon in a new 
civic faith, with the aid of new ideals, and, in a civic 
sense, thus, with the inspiration of a new religion. 

With this thought in mind I have sketched the 

V 



vi THE LAND OF PROMISE 

perspective of American scenes as it unfolds in the 
gradual filling-in of the territorial expanse of the 
western continent. I have then noted the spiritual 
culture which has accompanied, or followed upon, 
the material occupation of the banks of great water- 
ways, of wide plains, of prairies, and of mountain 
regions. 

America comes before Europe masked under the 
form of that brilliant American society which we 
all know. But behind conventional manners there 
has necessarily been a great spiritual experience and 
growth, which cannot well be known without a visit 
to the home-circles which are its sacred shrine and 
place of birth. Casual visitors to America are, more- 
over, too habitually impressed with certain salient 
notes of American activities to gain a truly-propor- 
tioned view of America and its national life as a 
whole. 

I have purposely made little allusion in these 
pages to these more obvious appearances of life 
which are the common subject of knowledge to 
everyday observers of American visitors to Europe, 
and to readers of current periodicals, or to casual 
visitors to America. 

I have aimed chiefly at showing what inner and 
spiritual forces unite all Americans in a certain com- 
munity of thought, feeling, and action. I have noted 



PREFACE vii 

especially strivings in which we feel that the triumph 
of the best ideal of America would be a triumph in 
which the human race would itself partake. To this 
union of spiritual forces I should be glad to give 
the name of the * civic religion of America ' ; but it 
is necessary to say I do not mean this * civic religion ' 
in a rival sense of the words to the Christian religion 
of the Churches in the United States. 

The chapters which deal with the territorial en- 
vironment of American life are mostly in the first 
portion of the book. I have begun with a chapter 
on New York, for the purpose of order in the narra- 
tive ; although, as a traveller, I had seen the other 
chief scenes of America from Los Angeles to Boston 
before I had gained sight of that commercial cosmo- 
polis. 

The allusion to America as the ^ Land of Promise ' 
in the title is made in recognition of the American 
faith in the dogma of perfectibility, a faith which is 
a motive power astir amid all the activities of the 
nation. The handing-down of this faith is a sort 
of spiritual testament which the idealist Pilgrim 
Fathers left after them to modern America. There 
would be no such political and social self-scrutiny, 
as is now occupying the mind of America, without 
that profound American belief that there are ideal 
American standards of life from which, as by a true 



viii THE LAND OF PROMISE 

criterion, the nation should choose constantly to 
judge itself. This, too, must be my excuse for any 
occasional allusion to * evils,' or 'corruptions' (so 
called) in civics or politics, for without noting them 
the real goodness and greatness of the national life 
could in no sense be set forth. 

In the long-run the ideal nation of the future is 
likely to be that nation among all others which shall 
have criticised its own shortcomings more joyously, 
more seriously, and more perseveringly than have 
any other people criticised their own civic trespasses 
and sins. 

R. DE B. 

All Hallows, St. Giles, 
DoRSETy /une 1908. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

The Site and Meaning of New York 

city circumvallated by wild nature— Sand and water wilder- 
nesses — The belt of pleasure resorts — Colossal architecture 
— Manhattan, a ship-like island — Growth and expansion — 
The seat of the controlling activities of America — Moral 
order impressed by commercial autocracy — Unique respon- 
sibilities of American lawyers — The gathering-place of the 
supreme producers of America — America's great art bazaar 
— Shipping and railway terminals — National intelligence 
organisation — Press and publishers — Commercial hierarchic 
unity — Government and population — '.Napoleons of com- 
merce' — Curtailment of speculative ventures — New Yorkers 
seen under a commercial mask — Hard-headed utilitarianism 
— New Yorkers at home — Humour and good spirits — Com- 
mercial education of beginners, . . . . p. i 



CHAPTER II 

The Lie of the Land 

Prospects to the south-west — The northern opening to the 
Central States and New England— A threefold junction — 
Dutch and English forced into home development by 
barriers — Conservative aspect of the War of Independence 
— First common sentiment of a native land— Americans 
become one people beyond the AUeghanies — The first 
gatherings on the middle plains — A new commercial outlook 
— Filling in the Mississippi Valley — Northern industrialists — 

ix 



THE LAND OF PROMISE 

Kentucky as a relic of old America — Central colonisation 
— Portable elements of American constitutionalism — Rail- 
ways, ranchemen, and farmers, . . . . p. 26 



CHAPTER III 
A Visit to the Central States 

The approach from Canada — Continental vistas from Niagara — 
The idyllic life of All-America — Chicago as a capital of 
capitals — Chicago's co-ordination of mid-western industries 
— The great American exchange and mart — The belt of cities 
around Chicago — The wheat pit and its speculators — Social 
and financial derelicts — Chicago a reform centre — A Chicago 
scene — Crudities inevitably disappearing, . . p. 44 

CHAPTER IV 
The Prairie World 

The Mississippi and Missouri rivers — The vast area of the 
Missouri basin — Inter-relation of bison, Indians, and rail- 
ways — A journey to the plains— Cause of undulations — Draw- 
backs to farming — Atmospheric mysteries — An autumn in the 
Republican River Valley— Winter— Catholics and Schools — 
Democratic society — The anti-saloon party — The aristocracy 
of children — The local Press — A visit from President 
Roosevelt — Sudden arrival of spring — A journey to the 
Rockies, P- 59 



CHAPTER V 

Comparative Study of American Nationalism 

America as an inter-racial ideal— Paucity of the Anglo-Saxon 
elements — Submergence of racialism — ' Colour ' the per- 
manent social cleavage — Europe's adherence to blood-racial- 
ism—America limited to a commonwealth for white men — 



CONTENTS xi 

Europeanised 'Huns' — America's inter-racial ideal is unique 
— Alexander's inter-racial Hellenistic world — Roman and 
American citizenship compared — Mediaeval internationalism 
— The Papal Temporal Power and Puritan Democracy — The 
British Empire as a unit — The United States as a 'civic 
theocracy' — Influence of Republican France in America — 
Compromise in the American Constitution — The union 
created by the Civil War — New Crises in the social structure 
— Hopeful outlook, P- 79 



CHAPTER VI 

The Centennial State of Colorado 

Colorado as an epitome of America — A State of vistas — The 
mountain, the plain, and the dried-up sea — The multicoloured 
sedimentary rocks — The canyon openings to the Front 
Range of the Cordilleras— The forest area— Denver, the 
capital — Civic idealism — Optimistic citizens and ' grafters ' 
— President Roosevelt in Denver — Civic militancy — Need of 
a 'peoples' constable' — The fortune-building of the State — 
Mining and agriculture — Ranching and sport — Visits to 
Buena Vista and Evergreen — Camp Neosho and its library 
— Visit to the head of the Front Range — Old rancheman's 
story — Clear Creek — Crossing the timber-line — Climbing 
Torrey's Peak — Visions of Western America — Between the 
Atlantic and the Pacific slopes — Mountain views, . p. 99 



CHAPTER VII 

Young America 

Limitation of the outlook and resume — The subject studied from 
the Coloradan viewpoint — American sense of comradeship 
for its child-world — Magic effect of respect for children — 
Comrade Man and Comrade Thing — The coming of assur- 
ance — The American child moulds the school, not the school 
the child — Arousing interest in young minds — The American 



xii THE LAND OF PROMISE 

meaning of history, geography, and mechanics — The Cha- 
tauqua movement — Serious attitude towards education — The 
educational gradus — Colorado's universities — Greeley Agri- 
cultural College — Golden Mining College — The colleges and 
state-building — The ideal and the practical, . p. 124 



CHAPTER VIII 
The Women of America 

The status of women in the West— Domestic habits and rarity of 
servants — Housework and culture — Playmate, not thought- 
mate — Feminine freemasonry — Literary clubs in mining 
camps — The travelling girl-visionary — Matronly prophetesses 
— Emancipation as an aid to womanliness — Ideals and 
environments — Devolution of property to women — Economic 
freedom — Working out the details of women's suffrage — 
Friendly family divisions in politics — Ruskin's picture of 
domestic economy applied to State rule — The women's model 
city charter for Denver — Women's influence in city and 
State — Criticism and answers . . . . p- 141 



CHAPTER IX 
The Mountain and Desert Empire 

All-America's proprietary interest in the West — Land, not water, 
to be obtained gratis — The myths of the book world — 
Personnel of Western stories — The Great Inland Basin — 
'Air-line' to Leadville — Approach to Salt Lake City — 
Mormonism as a parody on Americanism — Mormon authority 
over religion and industry — The momentum of the Mormon 
civic religion — Southern Utah and Nevada — A belt of land- 
locked lakes — The Sierra Nevadas — The tree world — Yellow- 
stone Park — Entrance to the Mohave Desert — The Grand 
Canyon of the Colorado River — Origin of the geometrical 
cuttings — Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, . P- 159 



CONTENTS xiii 

CHAPTER X 
San Francisco and its Worship of Spontaneity 

Cortez and Queen Califia — The California of the Spaniards — The 
Pacific Coast and its Ranges — The land of perpetual spring 
— The site of San Francisco — The Pacific metropolis — 
The arboreum of Golden Gate Park — Effect of the Great 
Fire of 1906 — The soul of the city — Exclusion of 'kill- 
joys' — Catholics and Puritans — Comparison with mediaeval 
Florence, p. 180 

CHAPTER XI 
New England and the American Civic Religion 

Contrasts between East and West — Approach from the West in 
autumn — The Connecticut Valley — Springfield — Education 
and National religious experience — Providence defined in 
American history — 'Development of doctrine' — A humanised 
theocracy — 'Eternity sanctioned' civics — The Unitarian re- 
volt, and Congregationalism — Civic religion positive, but not 
sectional — The commercialist Higher Critics — Materialism 
would keep religion as its ornament — The controlling power 
of finance — Religion as the true social science, . p. 197 

CHAPTER XII 
The Originality of American Thought 

The limited influence of New England — The cult of civic per- 
fectibility — Thought as embodied in institutions — An epitome 
of the thoughts of the world — Political independence forces 
spiritual reconstruction — Man's social duty to his individu- 
ality — The ordinary man — Tammany Hall primitive but not 
immoral— American hatred of the dilettante — Roosevelt 
and the people's mind — Vague optimism — Individualism 
— Practical science of the universities — The American 
Palpablists, P- 213 



xiv THE LAND OF PROMISE 

CHAPTER XIII 
The 'Canonical Books' of Civic Religion 

American and British literature — Contrasting mentality — Mythic 
background of America — The cultus myth and its literature 
— Popular manuals of American mentality — The cultus usage 
of some classics — The ' truly sweet,' and the ' sweetly true ' — 
Linking the ideal with the actual — A ' supreme spirit ' of 
geniality — The immigrant's sense of pardon — Cultured 
worship of high spirits — The danger of exaggerated optimism 
— Sociability of the 'wicked' — Devotees of good-humour — 
Geniality of all classes — Imagination in business undertak- 
ings — Money a mere social implement, . . p. 232 



CHAPTER XIV 
The American Press 

The medium of social intercourse — An incident of a newsless week 
— The tribal lays of America — Newspapers regarded as 
records of a modern American 'Sentimental Journey' — A 
comparison with the British Press — The ' Shakespearean ' 
address to mankind — The humour of the American Press 
— The Sunday magazine — Contents of a Sunday Denver 
Republican — The more serious papers — The national 
weeklies, p. 250 

CHAPTER XV 
A Common Christianity in America 

Sectional considerations excluded — A Frenchman on the social 
trend of American Christianity — Three Baptists in Colorado 
— A 'Holy Society' — Calvinism as a social religion — Modern 
social Protestantism — Prophetic judgment — A Divine Atone- 
ment in social integration — New religiousness not Altruism 
— Reason for the dislike of abstractions — Voluntary system 



CONTENTS XV 

requires self-denial— Doctrinal conservatism persists — The 
Institutional Church — Institutionalism concurs with piety 
— Architectural requirements of the Institutional Church — 
Service and Sermons — Sunday Schools — The Institutional 
Church as a social club — A social type of modernism without 
doctrinal innovation, p. 265 



CHAPTER XVI 

Social Conversion 

Belief in social resurgence — The American conception of heredity 
— The latent princeliness of man — Humanity immutable 
— Environment the opportunity for growth — Reputed evil 
heredity arising from malnutrition — Social sins due to rapid 
growth — Exaggerations and contortions — Social union to 
follow political union — Journalists, economists, and social 
seers — The 'Educational President' of New America — 
Captains from the Churches — Millionaires as reformers — 
Universities and social strategy — Evangelical federation and 
the democratic brotherly covenant, ... p. 286 

Index, P- 301 



Acknowledgment is due to Mr. Dudley Walton 
for valuable collaboration over some technical 
details, on which, as a journalist returned after 
residence of four years in New York City, he is 
an authority. Acknowledgment is also due to the 
Homiletic Review for permission to use information 
supplied me by Mr. Walton about the ' Institutional 
Church,' the substance of which is appearing also 
in the columns of that periodical. 



CHAPTER I 

THE SITE AND MEANING OF NEW YORK 

When the swift cross-ocean steamers are coasting off 
Long Island on the way to their New York goal, 
they bear to the south by the lighthouse of Fire 
Island. 

The ribs of ill-fated ship-skeletons breaking through 
their sand graves ahead, explain that the steamers are 
nearing the sand-banks driven up by the ocean round 
so much of the American shore. 

Fire Island Beach, is a desolate, rushy, mosquito- 
ridden bank, seventy miles in length and some few 
miles from the Long Island shore. In the long 
inland waters which it encloses, the hero-pirate 
Captain Kidd was wont to find a refuge from the 
weather between his sallies upon the shipping that 
[converged its ways towards Sandy Hook. 

From an out-of-the-way corner of Oak Island, 
called Havemeyer Point, safe from the ocean surf 
through a friendly spur of Fire Island, I could see 
the high-decked Cunarders approaching, reaching 
up over the top of the island sand-bank in the day, 

A 



2 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

or watch their myriad lights gliding along at night. 
Yet there was no sight whatever of the open sea. 

When storms raged, too, the surges and foaming 
crests of ocean-breakers made a ghostly array above 
all the sand-line of Fire Island. Yet they looked like 
nightmare unrealities, because the sea from which 
the winds drove them up remained ever behind the 
sand-bank. 

Protected thus from the front line of ocean ragings 
by the long outer sand-bank, Havemeyer Point, on 
Oak Island, is between a salt lagoon and the flowing 
waters of the inlet to the Great South Bay. Five 
miles across the Bay are the prosperous settlements, 
including the port of Babylon on the Long Island 
shore. 

But at Havemeyer Point, less than fifty miles from 
the commercial capital of the New World, you are as 
much in the wilderness as in the Arizona and the 
Nevada deserts. 

New York, then, though a centre of more than four 
million people, has a surrounding circumvallation of 
wild nature. There is the wild salt lagoon region 
all along the south Long Island coast ; a sandy 
central portion of the island itself. There are the 
Taconic Mountains to the north. There are the 
Catskills to the north-west across the Hudson, fre- 
quented by prosperous Hebrews. There are the 
lower terminals of the great Appalachians westwards, 



NEW YORK 3 

across New Jersey on the way to Wilkesbarre and 
Scranton. 

In that corner of wild nature which I chose for my 
summer retreat, there are sand-hills with miniature 
trees, with beds of yellow flowers on the slopes. On 
one side of Havemeyer Point are long meadows of 
rushes reaching down to the creek where cray-fish 
are found. Elsewhere are sweeps of sand ending in 
crested ridges like the edge of volcanic craters. The 
Point is cut off from the rest of Oak Island by a pass- 
age-way of the spring tides. Herons fly around the 
salt lagoon and on its edges are snipe and water-fowl. 

Fires, terrifying in the night, lit by the chance 
blowing about of sparks, would often rage in the dry 
grass in the early autumn, and threaten the summer 
camp of Havemeyer. 

Visitors lived in a rustic hotel abandoned during 
winter to the sea-fowl. 

The only communication with the outer world was 
the cat-boat with an old coloured sea hand, an ex-slave, 
as skipper. 

While New York was ninety degrees in the shade, 
the ocean temperature in this cool retreat necessitated 
flannels and warm rugs. In the winter a sheet of 
ice, five miles wide, connected the Point with Long 
Island mainland. On account of the daily tidal heav- 
ing that might crack the great white bridge in two, 
scarcely a man, however, would ever dare to cross. 



4 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

These great ocean-driven sand-banks, including 
Fire and Oak Islands, bore away south-westwards 
into the narrows of Sandy Hook. 

West of the great inlet of the sea enclosed by Fire 
Island and Oak Island, there was one other great en- 
closure called Jamaica Bay. Jamaica Bay, unlike 
the Great South Bay, is all a scene of animation and 
is filled with motor boats. 

We have now left the sand and water wilderness 
and are within the limits of the Western World 
metropolis. A railway on wooden stiltings crosses 
the animated lagoon to the Jewish seaside resort of 
Rockaway Beach. In the middle of the lagoon was 
a great moored houseboat, with at least ten rooms on 
the upper story, taken by a band of Englishmen and 
Canadians for a week-end summer resort. The night 
transfigured the outlook on the bay into gorgeous 
Venetian scenes. Many coloured lights were around, 
lighting trestles, houses, boats, with green and red 
and golden streaks of radiance. Huge rockets at 
times from Coney Island filled the sky with the 
emerald and ruby flares such as Whistler loved to 
paint. The tower of light of Coney's ' Dreamland ' 
showed clear in the west across the waters. The 
near shore lights were reflected in shivering path- 
ways of light upon the waters. The trestles were 
glorified into columns of precious gems where the 
red, yellow and green lights flashed upon them. In 



NEW YORK 5 

daylight, by taking a seven-mile journey westward in 
a motor boat, one entered the sea. To the left on the 
way thither was a long tongue of a sand-spit, with 
many a summer residence, and at the far end a lonely 
coastguard station. To the right were queer factories 
where the carcasses of worn-out horses from the great 
metropolis were transmuted into glue and bone-dust. 
At the sea-opening, to the right, was the fashionable 
Manhattan Beach, and a mile or two beyond the 
amazing and popular Coney Island. 

Coney Island is a compound of Derby Race day 
scenes and Earl's Court exhibitions. The island is 
a regular City of Light in itself, with an evening's 
population of half a million. Here one can shoot 
down a hundred feet in a boat into an artificial lake, 
or jerk about in a darkened underground switchback. 
The city is lighter than daylight during half the 
night, and filled with pleasure-seekers. 

This, then, is part of the outer pleasure limit of 
Greater New York. A big rim of amusement out- 
works in the cooler air of the hot dazzling summers, 
within the rim of wild nature, surrounds the city on 
almost every side. The pleasure camps are reached 
mainly from Brooklyn Bridge by the elevated cars, 
or by the steam ferries and underwater tunnels. At 
Coney Island and Manhattan Beach there is sea- 
bathing, and at the former also bazaar stalls and 
amusement gardens, theatricals, and giant wheels 



6 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

and switchback railways. On the rim to the north 
are motor tracks, and to the south the racing 
courses of Sheepshead Bay and Aqueduct. On the 
mainland, are the great parks of the Bronx. Beyond 
the Hudson River are the New Jersey quietudes. 
Southward are the Staten Island attractions, com- 
parable with the Isle of Wight. 

Within the pleasure circumvallation is a closer line 
of circumambient private homes. Outlying Brooklyn 
bulks large, containing the homes of a million New 
York business men and factory workers. Next are 
Jersey City, Hoboken (a German settlement, where 
the German liners land their passengers) ; Wee- 
hawken, and farther up river the Palisades on the 
New Jersey side of the Hudson ; and a circle of 
busy towns a few miles inland — Elizabeth, Newark, 
Paterson ; and the millionaire residential camps of 
Montclair and the Orange * Mountains.' 

Shut down within the long wedge of rock between 
the converging waters is the unwritten government 
palace of industrial America, the New York City 
proper, which fills up the Island of Manhattan. 

New York is great and cosmic because it is 
mistress of the Atlantic Ocean, and because it taps 
the main outlet of the chief industrial continent from 
behind a long row of inland mountains : following 
nature in its give and take to the world where the 
Hudson waters commingle with the sea. 



NEW YORK 7 

New York is supreme because it is fairly central 
amid the unparalleled frontages of cities on the 
eastern seaboard of America, and because of its 
harbours, wharves, sounds, and anchorages, worthy 
of a world-centre. 

New York was once forebodingly called New 
Amsterdam. It has resumed and expanded the 
commerce of the square-headed Dutch civilisation 
in the western world. 

New York is capital of the typical civilisation of 
the latter modern history, pictorialising in one its 
cosmic proportions, its centralisation, its organisa- 
tion, its trade convergences, its world-mart gather- 
ings of peoples. 

Approaching the business citadel from the harbour, 
rounding under the gigantic bridges across to 
Brooklyn by the tug-way, deflecting around Battery 
Gardens, and up the Hudson or North River, its 
miniature towns of ocean liners are seen safe in port. 
Thus one can judge of its inimitably favoured site. 
Along Broad Street, into Wall Street, by Trinity 
Church, boxed in between gothic sky-scrapers, look- 
ing up Broadway to the solemn beacon of Grace 
Church, never beyond view from the City Hall ; 
surveying the immense new white blocks in Madison 
Square beyond the Flatiron Building ; above all, 
walking from the Washington Arch leisurely as far 
as you can go in cosmic Fifth Avenue, where 



8 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

sovereign business clashes with sovereign palatial 
leisure, you see the pictorialised embodiment of the 
newly intercommercialised mankind. 

In points of Wall Street, and Broad Street, here 
and there in Broadway, at Wanamaker's stores, and 
in the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building, the 
sky-scraper structures possess a certain civic dignity 
of their own. 

The sky-scraper has grown out of the power of 
riches pressing skywards in protest against the re- 
sistance of a narrowed land-bar, enclosed by the East 
and North Rivers. 

If they disrupt the architectural order of the city, 
they are yet huge triumphs of human power. They 
are small, intrusive, vulcanic cities of themselves, 
stuffed or thrust into the air, because no place can 
be found for them upon the ground. 

New York City, in its extent as usually recognised 
by the rest of the world, has been built upon an 
island, ten miles long, called by the old Indian name 
of Manhattan. In shape the island-city lies like a 
long ship, between the Hudson and East Rivers, with 
its bows looking southward towards the Bay ; and its 
helm, one might suppose, is moored to the mainland 
by the bridges over the Harlem River. Across the 
Harlem is the suburb of The Bronx, knit up with 
Brooklyn and Staten Island into the City of Greater 
New York. 



NEW YORK 9 

In its first years, New York was a settlement around 
the Battery, at the extreme south tip of the island. 
A cow-path then ran up towards Harlem, and this 
path has grown into the city's chief thoroughfare, 
called Broadway. Broadway first runs due north to 
Grace Church, and thence veers steadily north-west- 
ward to the edge of the Harlem heights. Out of 
these rocky heights a large portion of the site of the 
modern city has been rock-hewn, avenue by avenue 
and street by street. 

A path beside one of the artificial lakes in Central 
Park, follows the course of the old Boston Road, 
where a sailor named McGown built himself a still 
existing house, known as McGown's Pass, at a point 
where the old mariner could have a view of land 
traffic, instead of a vista of the sea. 

The city's successive stages of expansion northward 
up the narrow ship-like island, were first up to Wall 
Street (the site of an old stockade), then to Grand 
Street, and to Canal Street. The first straight cross- 
town thoroughfare, 14th Street, running by Union 
Square and Tammany Hall, was then 'up-town.' 
After the Quaker precedents of Philadelphia, the rest 
of the area began to be filled up with right-angled 
street lines, with allowance for Madison Square, 
Central Park, and a few other open spaces. 

To one arriving in New York from the West, Fifth 
Avenue seems as a grand canyon, cutting the city 



lo THE LAND OF PROMISE 

lengthwise to the north from the lower old houses 
above Washington Arch. At right angles are over 
a hundred and seventy cross-town streets, from river 
to river, called respectively by numbers from the 
south. Fifth Avenue is accessible to Madison Avenue 
across Madison Square, on 23rd Street, east and 
west. Fifth Avenue also opens to Central Park, 
between 59th and i loth Streets. 

The houses in the ' canyon avenue ' are of heroic 
architecture. Business creeps up the avenue rapidly. 
There are great shops of preciosity, then the supreme 
hotels, and facing the park the ^ millionaires' mile ' 
of the supreme private mansions of America. 

New York is the rallying centre of the controlling 
activities of the United States. 

Here reign the autocrats of America's money 
power, the controllers of its commercial stabilities, 
the organisers of world-produce, the Napoleons of 
transportation, the supreme intelligence department 
of American activities, the dealers in publicity, the 
theatre trust and the lords of social amenities, chiefs 
of a millionfolded feudalistic train of mimes and 
musicians. 

Foremost of these are the financial emperors of the 
business empire of the West. The Rockefellers and 
Vanderbilts exert a commanding authority because 
their money is invested mostly in buying controlling 
interests of 51 per cent, in every company of trans- 



NEW YORK II 

portation by land or water, or in industries like coal 
steel or oil, which possess national or international 
power. 

A phase of American life is thus organised from 
New York, much as the Venetian Republic was once 
engineered by its merchant aristocracy. Rule, order, 
control, dominion, and industry radiate from New 
York from a few great financial houses, which hold 
these controlling investments in every great in- 
dustry worth considering throughout the American 
continent. 

Next in importance for the commercial stability of 
America, there are centred in New York the great 
Trust Companies for holding estates, administrating 
incomes, and distributing dividends. The fortunes 
of an industrial world can only be held firm by the 
aid of a great mastery of science and law. Science 
is called in aid for the steadying and insuring of all 
private interests and estates. The Metropolitan Life 
Building is a huge palace, filling an entire city block 
on Madison Avenue. Its mighty tower will overlook 
even the Flatiron Building, and it is the central 
shrine of the purveyors of this stabilitating power of 
fortunes through insurances. 

The greater lawyers of America are the engineers 
of this delicately intricate inter- adjustment of all 
successful fortune-building. The great lawyer by 
his capacity for warding off dangers to delicately 



12 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

adjusted estates, may earn as much as $250,000 a 
year from his millionaire employers. On account of 
his scientific mastery of detail, when it comes to a 
lawsuit, the importance of the great lawyer far tran- 
scends that of the judge. 

New York is great also, because it harbours the 
chief universal providers of America. These are 
embattled around Sixth Avenue and Union Square. 
All make a wide universal appeal to the domesticities 
of America. The Adams Dry Goods Company, 
Altmans, and Simpson and Crawford, are perhaps 
slightly more exclusive than the greater popular em- 
poriums of Macy and Siegel Cooper. Siegel Cooper's 
new eight-storied warehouse employs three thousand 
persons, and is a city in itself. Wanamaker's on 
Broadway, to the south of Union Square, is old- 
established, but new built in superb form, and is in 
the traffic centre of the city, with its own private 
passage-way to the subway system. 

A component of the order and central power of the 
cosmopolis is the permanent international exhibi- 
tion of art and commerce, picture galleries, gorgeous 
jewellery, priceless carpets from the East, carvings 
from Japan, and choice fabrics from all the world 
exposed in the famous shops of upper Broadway and 
Fifth Avenue. 

New York holds kingly sway also as the supreme 
rendezvous of the wholesale trade of America. Twice 



NEW YORK 13 

a year the intendant stockers of the leading shops 
in all the towns of America flock to the New York 
hotels. These are the buyers of drapery, millinery, 
tailoring, foot-wear, and haberdashery. The head- 
quarters of this traffic is within sight of Grace Church, 
where Broadway deflects north-westwards. 

The city is predominant in her dockings of ocean 
liners and coasting vessels. West Street is a five- 
mile line of piers and storehouses filled with the trade 
plunder of the world. 

Fifty acres of dwelling-denuded street land abutting 
on West 42nd Street encloses the enlarged terminus 
of the New York Central Railroad. On 34th Street, 
quarried out of the solid rock four stories below the 
road level, is the new station of the great Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad. The mileage of these two enormous 
systems exceeds twenty-three thousand, while their 
united capital represents nearly two billion dollars. 

The Pennsylvania Railroad has purchased the 
entire Long Island Railroad, and burrowed its way 
from the New Jersey margin, under the Hudson 
River, across Manhattan Island through a deep sub- 
way, and again under the waters of the East River 
to the Long Island terminus in Long Island City, 
just to the north of Brooklyn. With the Long Island 
system the New Haven Railroad is linking up, so 
that the entire Pennsylvania system comes into touch 
with all the industrial towns of New England. 



14 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

The New York Central new station, replacing a 
huge building dating only from 1896, is to be a 
cathedral-like structure, connected above and below 
ground with Manhattan general and local electric 
transit systems. 

Organisation and power also flow to the great city 
from its cabling and telegraphic centralisations, which 
make it the touchstone of the commercial life of 
America and the world. 

In a civilisation led by the force of public opinion. 
New York City harbours many commanding organs 
of publicity which contribute towards its sway over 
the rest of America. 

There is the gay and sportive Herald^ the serious 
Times, the caustic Sun^ the republican Tribune, the 
democratic World, the temperamental New York 
American, the financial Evening Post. Add to 
these the weeklies like Collier's, Harper's Weekly, 
Leslie's Weekly, and the monthlies like the Century 
Magazine, Harper's, Scribner's, Munsey's, McClure's. 
Many of these weeklies and monthlies circulate around 
half a million copies. 

Here also are centred the captains of scientific 
book-selling, including the pioneers of the modern 
campaigns for arousing and stimulating a book- 
demand. The organisers first aim at educating the 
whole nation to want their wares, and then dispense 
their hundreds of thousands of dictionaries, encyclo- 



NEW YORK 15 

paedias, histories, and anthologies of literature far 
and wide. Under the direction of their managers are 
training-schools for armies of book canvassers, and 
clever corps of advertisement writers. At the New 
York central office sometimes over a hundred typists 
are kept at work for more than a year over a single 
publishing enterprise. 

New York also holds the reins of power in a control 
of forty or more theatres, many of which are com- 
prised in the Frohman Theatre Trust. The greatest 
singers in the world are drawn to the New York opera- 
houses, where appreciation is certain and generous. 

With all these centralisations, the secret of New 
York's existence is laid bare. There is a hierarchic 
order, a balanced authority and power, controlling 
the great city in descending degrees of influence. A 
Belmont says, ' Let us bore through the rock and 
make a subway,' and by the time the subway is 
finished there is a new suburb built in anticipation 
ten miles up town. A ' Siegel-Cooper ' says, ' Let 
things be cheap,' and before long the whole scale 
of wages is adjusted to meet the possible domestic 
economies. 

Such order interacting throughout the social and 
industrial fabric would exist in New York even if 
there were no city government in a political sense. 

New York is governed politically by a great 
organisation of foreign born or foreign descended 



i6 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

population called Tammany Hall. This organisation 
gives the city the exact amount of government that 
the people desire. Puritanism is a strong force, and 
when it makes itself felt, the business-like politicians 
of Tammany give way. Model statesmen, other than 
such Tammany realists, are never likely to remain in 
power in New York. 

The immense voting population, which contains all 
residents who are not proved wrongdoers, is far too 
heterogeneous a mass to be aroused to any vitalising 
degree of close, concerted study of scientific civics. 
The true revolutionary of New York civic reform has 
been a more or less converted Tammany Hall. 

Legislation, to the horror of many New Yorkers, 
has to run the gauntlet of the legislators assembling at 
the little State Capital up the Hudson, called Albany. 
Here are influences from the up-state counties of an 
entirely different type in action. Buffalo joins in 
only as a minor in the parley. But the million-folded 
phalanx of well-rusticated citizens of upper New York 
State can outweigh New York in voting power at 
Albany. These sturdy and old-fashioned Protestants 
are not altogether likely to see eye to eye with 
cosmopolitan and Catholic New York citizens. In 
any case minorities in New York City who have been 
overruled in the city politics often make their last 
and most effective stand in the State legislature at 
Albany, 



NEW YORK 17 

Only a limited section of the day population of the 
city really lives upon Manhattan Island. All the 
rest live in the outlying residential areas of Greater 
New York, or across the Hudson in the hill-suburbs 
of New Jersey. 

There are, however, populous colonies of Irishmen 
below 59th Street on the west side of Fifth Avenue. 
The Jews, from all parts of Europe, are packed in the 
East Side ghetto, by the hundred thousand, above 
Brooklyn Bridge. As they prosper, they push due 
north into the better dwelling sites. Thus a great 
colony of Hebrews has migrated from the slums 
about Brooklyn Bridge to a new tenement and apart- 
ment house district in Harlem, above 125th Street, 
and in the uppermost reaches of Fifth Avenue. 

On the opening of the gigantic Williamsburg 
Bridge across the East River, 100,000 Jews migrated 
in the course of a few months from the congested dis- 
tricts of Manhattan. They settled in East New York 
and Brownsville in the heart of Brooklyn's vacant 
areas, and built up a great new Hebraic suburb. 
The completion of a third bridge via Blackwell's 
Island may lead to like results, again to the north. 

The Italians are adjacent to the Hebrews, aligned 
with Broadway above City Hall Park. They are also 
settled to the west of Broadway, and crowd up on 
holidays into Washington Park, which touches the 
base of Fifth Avenue at the Washington Arch. 

B 



i8 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

The Germans chum together in groups, chiefly 
along Third Avenue. Others are across the water at 
Hoboken, where the German liners arrive. Russians 
are congregated in an upper corner of Central Park. 
There are some French people on mid-Sixth Avenue. 
The quiet law-abiding Hungarian citizens are below 
14th Street eastward, and Syrians, Bulgarians, and 
Roumanians tend to settle around the Battery. 

Conscious the livelong day of all an ocean and all 
a continent, New York has evolved the great, terrible, 
sudden, sweeping management of human affairs, 
parallel to what, in the days of bodily combat, were 
characteristic of the world-conquerors like Hannibal, 
Alexander, Csesar, Frederick, Napoleon. Enthroned 
on the dais of city blocks around Wall Street, and 
seated at office and reigning here, the long-visioned 
Napoleons of a commercialised humanity, aspiring to 
reduce the nations, more effectively than could the 
Bismarcks and the big battalions, to a single in- 
dustrial commonwealth, in which they and their 
houses shall reign. Brain to brain in hidden and 
indomitable conspiracy, America's magnates are here, 
planning and ' organising ' victory after the manner 
of an ordinary industrial enterprise. 

Rivals to one another within the predetermined 
licence which closes in a moment automatically 
when it is necessary to resist the common world-foe 
without, the New York cosmic intellect is yet just now 



NEW YORK 19 

examining its conscience for certain moments of over- 
haste, of false optimism, of miscalculations of men, 
of the set-backs which have dogged the world-con- 
queror ever since Rameses, Nebuchadrezzar, Xerxes, 
Hannibal, Alexander, Hildebrand. No one has ever 
perfectly conquered the world. The Ruler of Empire 
at the height of Roman glory bewailed defeat in 
the memorable cry for his legions lost with Varus. 
Sultan Mohammed 11., who took Byzantium, was 
scattered by insignificant Rhodes. The power of 
Solyman the Magnificent was turned adrift on the 
seas by a handful of Maltese knights. 

So likewise the general staff of commercial world- 
conquest, John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont Morgan, 
J. J. Hill, W. K. Vanderbilt, E. H. Harriman, the 
Goulds, Stuyvesant Fish, Mackay, Keene, the Steel 
Trust magnates, have been checked in the last few 
years by the power of a progressive type of a federal 
executive that they, more than others, have helped 
to place in authority. Unless adversity shall have 
trained their understanding, and taught them the 
secret of a new wisdom and strategy that no one 
knows to-day but these industrial chiefs, their place 
in history will have been but the stepping-stone for 
some still more collective American assault upon 
the chieftainship of the world's commerce. And 
these preparations for future armageddons must, for 
a while, leave the nations in a breathing period of 



20 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

security before American trade magnates can renew 
their threatening to dictate their means of livelihood 
to mankind. 

Only a few years ago all the world dreaded 
America as a nightmare threatening to Americanise 
society, culture, commerce, railways, shipping, trade. 
To-day the war- concentration for commercial con- 
quest has rather suddenly fallen apart. Railway 
mergers, in one of which the efforts of J. J. Hill were 
associated with the patriotic effort to run a trunk line 
from the Pacific ports of the North West to New 
Orleans as an opening to the Atlantic, have been dis- 
solved. The Steel Trust, first brought into the law- 
courts by an independent lawyer of Broad Street, 
ran through a * bear ' movement which reduced 
from the nominal billion dollars'-worth of stock 
to the actual but still good value of about half that 
sum. With West Canada and Argentina in com- 
petition, there are unlikely to be attempted corners 
in the world's foods by a Leiter or a Gates. Ship 
subsidies are now forthcoming, but not on that vast 
scale which the late Mark Hanna contemplated, for 
' bridging the ocean ' in the interest of the sale of 
New World goods. 

Organised American Industrialism is well assured 
of future conquests, subject to an orderly and scien- 
tific management, and without that old rainbow 
radiance which used to lure the public to tax itself 



NEW YORK 21 

for the splendour of the Court of the reigning In- 
dustrial dynasty. 

A result of the people's demand and of President 
Roosevelt's leadership, from the days when he 
assailed the Northern Securities Company merger 
of Hill and Morgan in the North-Western States, 
seems to be, that no industrial king shall rule in 
the American Israel unless he be law-abiding, 
people-serving, nation-consolidating; a leader, guide, 
friend, not a driver, deceiver, or foe of the toiling 
millions of the States of the Union. 

New York, in spite of ups and downs, is ever 
proudly conscious of the cosmopolitan dignity of con- 
manding both an ocean and a continent. It assumes 
a special, stately rapidity to fulfil the function of 
rendering frictionless the interactions of the thousand- 
leagued business of America. A man who enters its 
portals must assume a deportment of hard-headed- 
ness too, and reserve his humanity for a luxury of his 
private life. He must study that sovereign machine 
of world-work which is industrial America. He must 
give himself up to a necessary portion of it if he 
would freely take of its minting-house. In the go 
of this fighting arena. New York is all very much 
the same. The citizens are filled with stately square- 
headed world-circumspective conceptions of business 
statesmanship. They live in a uniform public life 
which is the merest annexe of their business stand- 



22 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

ing. New York one hears called the one Eastern 
American city where purse conditions used with 
square-headed freemasonry are supreme in the social 
sphere. Yet to argue that this city is all for the 
loud life of the business of Wall and Broad Streets 
with their annexed social display of the spectacular 
mansions and hotels of Fifth Avenue would be the 
most utter fallacy that any one could make. 

The city, it is true, from its very position has 
developed a trade pose and a conjoined social pose 
in which all its city men are at one. But the 
supreme fact about this cynical hard-headedness is, 
that it is a deliberate utilitarian pose. Nay, to the 
vast number of New Yorkers, it is a pose set aside 
the moment the business hour is closed. 

Its citizens are alert to the humour of the neces- 
sarily dual life in such a cosmopolis. The more clever, 
successful, pushing, a man may be in the moments of 
business, the more whole-souled may be his recoil to 
all that is genial in the after-time, or on the occasion 
of any transaction where the excuse is given for 
being sociable. A pushing Hebrew I met would go 
out of his way in aiding people who applied to him 
to situations, through his extensive acquaintance, 
though they were quite strangers. Another suc- 
cessful New York Jew while at a summer holiday 
resort was the model of affability to the whole party, 
treating every one to boating and fishing, and lead- 



NEW YORK 23 

ing in every kind of social amusement. Of company 
promoters among New Yorkers, one that I knew 
once went down to town hard set on business. In 
the hotel he met an Egyptian, with whom he entered 
into such an interested conversation about the Orient, 
that the day passed, without business having come 
upon the field. Another business man I knew would 
spend his weekly earnings in entertaining a large 
party of friends over Sunday, week after week, at a 
hotel he had bought on an island. They were sup- 
posed to be visiting the hotel in view of its possible 
opening for business, which was ever delayed. 

Yet the like jollying type of New Yorker, when he 
does enter the business arena, is indistinguishable 
from any others in pushing and pressing points. 

New York is in fact a city as diversified in its 
private home circles of life, as much as it is all one 
in the management of its cosmopolitan business 
school and world-mart. The leading genius of its 
experience in quest of commercial world -supre- 
macy, enforces a ruthless business code upon all who 
wish to share in its domination. But the moment the 
common uniform of service is thrown off, New York 
reverts into ten thousand free-and-easy generous 
social circles, where all business is for the time being 
joked about as play. 

As to the science of business, as it is taught to the 
average man in New York, the young man who 



24 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

wants to work his way to the heights, apart from 
office life, usually has to begin as a canvasser, 
traveller, seller of goods, or company agent. He is 
drilled often in a vivacious manner in the oratorical 
championship of the company's goods by the adver- 
tising manager. He must take in certain streets, 
districts or outlying parts, or must travel in neigh- 
bouring States. If he can sell effectively he has 
claims on the company, and can become their agent, 
earning a good salary and managing their affairs 
locally. During all this time he is taking in for 
himself America's problem of the supply and demand 
for goods. He notes suburbs filling in, or centres 
of increase in the population, the high price of 
certain materials, the slackness of enterprise of this 
or that firm. Thus a big show-card firm was once 
charging high prices and ever expanding its business. 
A young Englishman who knew mechanical drawing 
saw his chance. Short of stature, he entered the 
firm as an office-boy on three dollars a week, and in 
three weeks had mastered the secrets of apprentice- 
ship. He employed an English lithographer, a 
mechanical air-brush, and five apprentices whom he 
taught, and hired a loft. He soon would duplicate 
the products of the big firm, and sell them profitably 
at half the price. I called once at the office, and he 
had got orders for $500 worth in two weeks ; later, an 
order for $2000. I believe, however, that the business 
was finally absorbed by the chief canvasser. But 



NEW YORK 25 

such was a typical American trade opening which was 
worth a gold-mine if pushed with that masterful energy 
that alone wins success against the opposing powers. 

The entire population thus becomes private ob- 
servers and speculators on the business conditions 
of the United States. All clerkships or office-work 
or canvassing are points of vantage for watching 
what is going on. No one succeeds who would 
not himself accept employment from another as an 
apprenticeship and also as a post for observation. 

If New York then, to many a million, is the hand- 
some salary-payer for all sorts of office-work, it is also 
an ever open door for the really ingenious, imagina- 
tive young man, who is also equipped with tact and 
judgment, in the learning of that chief of worldly 
sciences, namely, the building of fortunes. 

The small beginner has often a greater chance of 
finishing as a magnate than the high-salaried be- 
ginner who is content to work steadily at an office, 
and is an unimaginative man. 

In its final outlook. New York, in all its worldly 
glory, is the embodiment of the supreme romance of 
life of the great western continent. In all its turmoil 
and activities a process of * selection ' has singled out 
and crowned with success instances of wit, judg- 
ment, adventurousness, imaginativeness, nerve, and 
executive ability, gathered together almost from 
under the four quarters of heaven. 



26 THE LAND OF PROMISE 



CHAPTER n 

THE LIE OF THE LAND 

To picture the United States from New York, one 
should imagine to the west the closing north-easterly 
approach of a thousand-mile mountain range, shut- 
ting off the coast from the Mississippi plains. The 
outlying abutting hills of this range may be seen 
from a New York sky-scraper as their outlines 
darken against the light of a westering sun. To the 
south-west this Appalachian chain, ever widening 
from the coast, leaves room for all lowland coastal 
States to the south. Rich peninsulas begin to hang 
in succession like clusters of grapes to the south-west, 
hanging southwards like all the famous peninsulas 
of the world. The indented land-clusters of New 
Jersey, Delaware and Maryland protect the inland 
waters of Delaware Bay, the Chesapeake, the Rappa- 
hannock, the Potomac, and the James River estuary. 
On the river banks close to this amphibian world, 
but only a few miles interspaced, are the stately cities 
of Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore and Rich- 
mond. On the sandbanks of the curving ocean front, 
east of Philadelphia and other cities, is an almost 



THE LIE OF THE LAND 27 

perpetual marine parade of fashionable seaside re- 
sorts, all the way down from Newport to Tampa, and 
every year society follows the sun from November to 
June, in a steady migration of pleasure-seeking. 

From the inside of the Chesapeake Bay, famed for 
its ducks and shad-fish, the land now falls due to 
the south, towards the swamps and marshes of Caro- 
lina. It was by the inspiration of these marshes 
that Sidney Lanier wrote some of the choicest por- 
tions of the American anthology. 

After Cape Hatteras the land bears again to the 
south-west, enclosing the Carolinas and Georgia, 
until the long Appalachian range, after culminating 
to its highest, now a long way inland, subsides to the 
south in Alabama. 

This ever-widening radiation of land from New 
York encloses all the original thirteen States of the 
Union, except New York itself and New England. 
South and east, prospects from New York open to 
the ocean. On the west side is the Hudson River, 
the American Rhine, descending from due north 
with high banks westward, and a low mountain 
barrier farther inland running up to the Catskills, 
and ultimately to the extensive sporting fields of 
the pine-topped Adirondacks. 

The two other radiations are therefore due north 
and north-east. New York's natural opening to the 
continent of America is northwards, not westwards. 



28 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

Shipping and railway lines, and the modern roads 
along the lines of the older trails, all run naturally 
northwards to the Dutch settled Albany. Much of the 
permanent prosperity of the great New York Central 
and Hudson River Railroad is due to the fact that it 
follows the water level quite faithfully, with absolute 
economy of engineering in its easy gradients. 

At Albany the world-roads open to the upper ex- 
panses of the vast Empire State. The New York 
Central's main line, and the Erie Canal, now being 
deepened for sea-going vessels, veer to the west 
through the Mohawk valley to the handsome city 
of Buffalo, and all the West. 

Another narrow radiation of land from New York 
expands north-eastward to New England. 

Thus New York is the inevitable centre of three 
great convergences. It unites the South with New 
England. It is the main outlet of continental America 
through the course of the Hudson River from the 
north. It places New England in touch with the 
Southern and South-eastern States. It is easy now 
to see much of the reason for the development of the 
present United States. 

The romantic Frenchmen ascending the mighty 
waterway of the St. Lawrence River were lured to 
the unexplored Beyond by the promptings of their 
environment. First the river itself allured them 
onwards, as they thought, towards the riches of 



THE LIE OF THE LAND 29 

the Orient. Whoever has spun down the Lachine 
Rapids above the city of Montreal, will recall that 
once these rapids were supposed to descend direct 
from China (La Chine). Reaching the Great Lakes, 
the Frenchmen soon toiled in boats to the far south- 
west rim of Erie and Michigan. With Indian canoes 
they could ascend the short rivers to the Mississippi 
watershed. In flood-time indeed there was an open 
way from the St. Lawrence into the Mississippi 
basin. All the year portages of from one to ten miles 
brought them from one basin to another. Romance, 
or missionary zeal, next drove the valiant Frenchmen 
down the Mississippi, and the outpost forts like St. 
Joseph were built. Towns with French names still 
show the line of their early and later explorations. 
What the French in India attempted to do under 
Desaix, and what they almost succeeded in doing 
since under Marchand at Fashoda, the French here 
too had aimed at doing in hemming in the prospective 
Anglo-Saxon advance. But the French failed at the 
play-work of empire building, just because they con- 
quered too rapidly to assimilate. The only remains 
of French America to-day are British -protected 
Quebec and the spiritual dominion of the Church 
of Rome in Canada and the mid -western States. 
Material expansion was not material enough. Spirit- 
ual expansion was intangible by political failure, and 
that alone remained. 



so THE LAND OF PROMISE 

The history of the English settlements was in exact 
converse to that of the French. New England was 
wholly excluded from expansion by cross-barring 
rivers running from north to south, and by the 
Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. New England 
colonists were obliged to till the land and settle in 
townships near the coast. 

The other settlements of Pennsylvania, Virginia, 
the Carolinas, Maryland and Georgia were shut in 
between the Alleghany Mountains and the sea. 
Waterways here almost supplied the need for cities. 
Communication, reasonably as rapid by water here 
as by roads in New England, made all the tobacco- 
planters along the banks of the southern rivers one 
social community. 

The moment then that the English-speaking 
colonists were thus securely restrained for peaceful 
growth and development, the rest of the material 
history of America was inevitable. The thirteen 
original colonies were the training-grounds for the 
future continental-conquering body. 

A settled population invariably finds that the armies, 
forts, navies of a neighbouring foreign domination 
are of merely transient value. For there are always 
moments of fluctuation in the wars and crises of foreign 
occupying Powers, when the rival's frontier need but 
be walked through, that its lands may be annexed. 
In this manner the French and Spanish dominions, 



THE LIE OF THE LAND 31 

back of the original settlements along the coast-line, 
fell into the hands of the native-born Americans. 
The northern French possessions were surrendered 
as much on account of naval affairs around the coast 
of Europe as on account of the fall of Quebec. The 
Louisiana Territory became French through the home 
wars of Spain. Even the revolution of the Colonies 
against England was really a conservative assertion 
of popular rights against the revolutionary re- 
actionism of the Home Government of that period. 

The modern peer-colonies of England really belong 
to the Empire to-day because they went through a 
period of experience in which the British Govern- 
ment wished them to become independent, and shift 
for themselves. 

In the age of King George it was probably im- 
possible to realise that if the central Government 
creates a colonial empire free from subjection, it will 
remain in union ; and if the central Government 
attempts to enforce subjection, the Colonies upon a 
certain moment of growth are sure to declare them- 
selves free. 

The War of Independence happened almost the 
moment when a common and effective consciousness 
of life in and for a common country was possible to 
the native-born and incoming population of the 
original Thirteen Colonies. 

America fought, not for new and unheard-of claims. 



32 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

but for equality in the possession of the ancient and 
inseverable rights enjoyed by English citizens. For 
this reason the leader of the revolt, Washington, has 
been called the ' Great Conservative of America.' 

Before this inevitable Revolutionary War, when 
the old-time peoples' rights had been systematically 
re-asserted against the Georgian understudy of the 
Tudors, little fusion, however, had happened be- 
tween the manifold settlers of these thirteen original 
colonies. 

New England was compact of old English burgesses 
now across the seas ; social New York was Dutch ; 
Germans were in western Pennsylvania ; Scotch and 
Irish had colonisations of their own in backland 
valleys. The South still retained much of the gentle- 
man-adventurer spirit of the Elizabethan founders of 
Virginia. 

All the various peoples were Americans, but each 
section retained the separate characterisation of their 
origins. The unity of America began to be formed 
as the outcome of political confederation ; but still 
more certainly it came into being through joint 
colonisation in the great inland plain, away from the 
broken eastern sea-board. 

The truest of all the Americas was that which was 
sifted through the Alleghanies into the emptied 
ocean-basin of the Mississippi, leaving all that was 
foreign or sectional behind the mountain sieve. 



THE LIE OF THE LAND 33 

The original type of this most American of 
Americas is still found in much of the famed State 
of romantic old Kentucky. The newly-modelled 
most American of the Americas, which first began 
to grow up around the western meeting - ground 
called Kentucky, now fills the thousand-leagued 
basin of the Missouri-Mississippi plains. 

These Alleghanies which cut the New America 
from the European influences felt in the old days 
along the tidewater settlements of the old colonies, 
are made up of a threefold ridge of mountains. The 
Blue Ridge lies to the east, with many an outpost 
abutting on the rich fields and woodlands of Virginia 
and Carolina. Behind, in strict parallel, after long 
straight valleys intervening, are the ridges compris- 
ing the Great Smoky Mountain range, and behind 
this is the Cumberland range. The three gaps, 
which travellers must somewhere or other trail 
through, would be easy enough to pass if those of 
any one ridge of these ranges were opposite those 
of any other ridge. But in order to complete the 
journey, on entering the first gap the traveller must 
run up or down a long way as in a maze, between 
the ridges, before he reaches the second, and the 
same labyrinthine journey must be undertaken before 
he leaves the final ridge to the west. 

The chief of these passage-ways was by an entrance 
from Philadelphia to the mountains above Wadkin's 

c 



34 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

Ferry, over the Potomac River, joining the trail from 
Virginia to the south, and proceeding through to 
the historic Wilderness Road. The trail reaches 
Cumberland Gap out to the southwest in a journey 
of several hundred miles between the mountains. 
Before the end it was joined by a more southerly 
trail from the Carolinas. When the backwoodsmen, 
following the dauntless Daniel Boone, the founder 
of Kentucky, had thus severed themselves from their 
commercial and industrial starting-point of the old 
colonies, it was necessary, so to speak, to create a 
commonwealth for themselves from the beginning. 
The pioneers who did so founded that hugest division 
of the New World which fills in the Mississippi 
watershed. 

After the Indian frontier fights, the settlers, spread- 
ing a little, centring in Nashville, Tennessee, and 
Boonesborough, Kentucky, found themselves in a 
country as well filled with watercourses as was the 
estuary region that they had left behind them. Yet 
all these navigable waterways of the Ohio and its 
affluents flowed away from their starting-point and 
not towards it. The Ohio flowed into the Mississippi. 
The Mississippi entered the Gulf of Mexico at New 
Orleans, then held by Spain. From the very begin- 
ning, then, the trans-Alleghany settlements formed 
mostly a self-contained world, opening out away from 
the sea-board of the Atlantic. 



THE LIE OF THE LAND 35 

All these pioneers donned a sort of Indian costume 
made of crude leather, or of buckskin, or furs, with 
mocassins for footwear. Except by the steep -cut 
banks of rivers in the foot region of the back ridge 
of the mountains, they quickly followed up the water- 
courses as they had been wont to do in the tobacco 
districts of Virginia. The waterways, as hitherto, 
remained their means of intercommunication. The 
new colonists found a wondrously fertile country 
beyond the limits of the abutting Cumberland lime- 
stone. The region of lower modern Ohio and part of 
Kentucky was then a vast treeless territory of glacial 
deposits. 

The corn grew here readily but was valueless for 
exportation. It was utilised however, when its 
essence was distilled into the more portable Bourbon 
whisky, which could be exported. This Bourbon 
whisky is distilled from Indian corn, or maize, to this 
day, in these districts, for all that merry company 
who relish this particular brand of fire-water. 

In those early days most domestic vessels and 
utensils were made of wood, and oaken pegs were 
used in place of nails. Men lived in wooden huts 
behind wooden stockades. They made their linen 
from local plants, and right up to this day flax is 
grown and linen made locally. On and off, the 
Spaniards allowed them to ship goods down the river 
to New Orleans. Then, to an extent, they were 



36 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

prosperous, and brought back luxuries from this 
southern gateway to the outer world. In time the 
difficulties of transit compelled them also to establish 
manufactories of their own. Little, if any, merchan- 
dise was ever worth transporting through the Alle- 
ghany mountain maze. After the Louisiana Purchase, 
by which the former Spanish territory came into the 
United States, the initial infant industries grew to 
large proportions, and all the rivers like the Ohio 
were crowded with boats whose destination was New 
Orleans. In this New America an adventurous, 
mobile, restless, southern type prevailed. Besides 
the many Virginians, perhaps the majority of the 
new migrants had come up from the western hinter- 
land of Carolina called Tennessee. They had become 
trained expansionists, ever athirst for new colonisa- 
tion. They looked upon expansion as the normal 
affair of life. As waterways are not barriers but 
rather openings, the new settlers soon began that 
great and triumphant filling-in process along all the 
waters of the Mississippi Valley. Stage by stage, 
in a very few years, they had taken up every point 
of vantage ; but when the Erie Canal was opened 
from the Hudson to Lake Erie, then the North too 
flocked to the new mid- West. 

A peculiar illustration of the rivalry between North 
and South is shown in the State boundary of Illinois. 
Illinois is a great central State beyond Ohio and 



THE LIE OF THE LAND 37 

Indiana whose commercial capital is Chicago. The 
Northern officials who controlled the State delimita- 
tion purposely expanded its borders northwards 
along the shores of Lake Michigan. They wished 
thus to facilitate its connection with the north via 
the Erie Canal, rather than with the south via the 
Mississippi. Northern emigrants would flock in 
now within the limits of Illinois. The produce in 
the outgoing boats would return eastwards in place 
of the emigrants going westwards. The men of the 
north would thus outnumber and outvote the men 
who had settled from the less approachable south. 
Moreover the slave paternalism which travelled every- 
where with the southerner would be avoided by the 
inclusion of this north-settled Chicago enclave within 
the bounds of Illinois. 

Kentucky had by now settled to a kind of permanent 
adventurousness. Those who went beyond from the 
south filled up southern Illinois and Missouri. The 
chief northern colonisations of pure American blood 
were in Ohio and Indiana, and transmontane Virginia 
and Pennsylvania. The industrial sections of this 
territory like Pittsburg and Cincinnati have received 
in recent years a huge inflow of foreign emigrants. 
This is true of all the iron, coal, and oil districts of 
all these regions. 

I have been to a mining camp called Fontanet in 
the extreme west border of Indiana where no single 



38 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

American dwelt. Here were match - box houses 
perched about on any pile of rubbish ; no streets, no 
drainage, low wages, often short time. There were 
many Austrians and Bohemians who could not speak 
English, a few Irish storekeepers and no anti-saloon 
movement. Some few leaders, however, were rapidly 
learning English, and these would in time undoubt- 
edly rally the rest of the population to mount up upon 
the level of their American neighbours. 

The filling in of the vast Mississippi basin by a 
uniform class of pioneers of a simplified American- 
ism, has created a marked uniformity in the tens of 
thousands of cities and villages of this whole vast 
continental area. Some may have called the back- 
woodsmen who first made these settlements de- 
civilised ; no one can ever call them unintelligent 
or undaring. But in truth the pioneers were rather 
like men who are mobilised, after the manner of 
citizen-soldiers who throw aside baggage and im- 
pediments while the rough but necessary tasks are 
being put through. All these great Central States 
are founded upon a civilisation of the purest sort of 
Americanism. This Americanism possesses an irre- 
sistible momentum, settles to a high culture the 
moment that leisure is given it, and is irresistible 
in transmuting and absorbing foreign manners and 
customs. 

After the pioneer native Americans had filled in 



THE LIE OF THE LAND 39 

the points of vantage of the area, in the choice sites 
for cities and emporiums, all the foreigners who 
followed them were unable to upset the sturdy 
Americanism implanted there. The ci-devant back- 
woodsman founded schools and all the second 
generation had as good a schooling, if not a better 
one, than their brethren in the Eastern States. There 
were, perhaps, less who gained pre-eminence, but 
far fewer who fell below the general average. The 
mid-American type is of an all-round culture, ready 
for anything, interested in all the world and in all 
its ways. 

Because his civilisation is simple and adaptable for 
equipment in rapid colonisation, it is many times 
more easily teachable to the immigrant than the more 
elaborate civilisation of the Eastern States. 

The great central heart of America is therefore, 
to-day, this uniform mid-western world. It extends 
from Pittsburg and Cincinnati in a line through 
Indianapolis, Louisville, Evansville, St. Louis, and 
the two Kansas Cities, and St. Joseph, and Omaha. 
A fresher type of the same civilisation and culture 
is found in the dryer agricultural parts of Iowa, in the 
cultivated prairie-lands of Nebraska, and the farther 
portions of the State of Missouri, and in Kansas. 
The flatter, solider, damper regions are in lower 
Illinois, Missouri, around the big cities of Indiana 
and Ohio. Chicago is the opening centre on the 



40 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

way to the higher States of Wisconsin, Minnesota, 
and the wheat-growing plains of the Dakotas. The 
great lake State is Michigan, which has an advanced 
civilisation and a noted university. All these States 
are now far advanced along a modernised type of 
culture. This facile culture is founded upon the 
national schools, continued in the high schools and 
filled in in the universities, and rounded out by the 
lessons of frequent travellings around the world. Of 
the older, primitive America, there is nothing left 
alone, except the famed State of Kentucky, together 
with West Virginia and portions of the back-world 
of the big State of Pennsylvania. Northwards even 
Kentucky is industrial along the banks of the Ohio. 
Eastward in the limestone district of the Cumberland 
range, are the race of the wildish farmers who flocked 
in record numbers to defend the Union. South- 
wards is the magic blue grass region of Kentucky, 
famed for its breeding of horses, and rich in agri- 
culture. The men of this region are descendants of 
the backwoodsmen southerners. In the Civil War, 
in spite of official proclamations, they left their State 
to rally to their brethren under the standard of the 
Southern Confederacy. 

Thus Kentucky, east and south, remains the old 
American America of the primitive reunion from the 
coast States. The graphic, romantic sketches of 
popular novels which are written in such abundance 



THE LIE OF THE LAND 41 

about the wayward, good-hearted, reckless adven- 
turers, do no injustice to these stoutly individualistic 
men of ^ Old Kentucky.' This State remains the most 
American in its manners and its free-heartedness of 
all the mid-western American States of the Union. 

So America, full to the Alleghanies, must neces- 
sarily flow over to the Mississippi valley, till now 
empty but for a few tribes of Indians, nominal claims 
of ownership, and a line of forts. The climate was 
suitable, the men were trained ; serious obstacles 
were but few. Therefore the filling in of Ohio, 
Indiana, Missouri, and all the States of the Missis- 
sippi basin was rather like a nation's inner growth of 
population, than an outer expanse into unknown 
worlds. A portable element of American constitu- 
tionalism went with all the settlers. Sometimes an 
inexperienced colony from New England with all its 
niceties would clash with a colony from the well- 
experienced colonists of the mid- West. In this case 
the toning down happened for the New Englanders 
towards the seasoned bandsmen of the Louisiana 
States. 

Kansas took in New Englanders and Southerners. 
Colorado is a compendium of all America. The 
prairies and plains of the West had an army of 
ranchers, stockmen, cowboys, rangers, expanding 
till the 'eighties. Ever since then the prairies have 
diminished before the advance of steady streams of 



42 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

settlers. Of late there have been bitter feuds between 
rangers with sheep and cowboys over the few remain- 
ing free grazing districts in Wyoming, because the 
same grass cannot in the nature of things feed both 
sheep and cattle. After the wilds of the cowboys, 
came the enclosed ranches of the fixed cattlemen with 
their stock developed from Shorthorns and Devons 
and other noted herds of cattle which now supply the 
great meat-packing industry of the mid-west. 

Stock was useless without the railroads, but even 
with the railroads, stockmen in Western Nebraska 
think it too far to have to send to Chicago. Conse- 
quently, packing centres have arisen at Omaha, 
Kansas City, St. Joseph and Denver. Refrigerator 
cars thence take the dressed meat to its destinations 
in American cities, or to sea-board for foreign ship- 
ping. 

From the year 1848 vast German bands of revolu- 
tionaries found their long-sought Utopia on the far 
shores of Lake Michigan. Then Scandinavians 
found their ideal lands and liberties in Minnesota 
and the North-west States. Missourians were full- 
flavoured settlers from the Kentucky line. Nebraska 
received foreigners and also New Englanders. The 
Southern States are now in process of receiving and 
assimilating the overflow of crowded southern Europe. 

Thus in all the central regions the staple products 
are cattle, maize or Indian corn, and winter wheat. 



THE LIE OF THE LAND 43 

In the wealthy States to the north, including Iowa 
and the Dakotas, with their converted prairies, and 
Wisconsin and Minnesota, with their deforested lands, 
are the spring wheat flatlands whose milling centres 
are the twin cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis. 

Meanwhile, the many-coloured dreams of northern 
freedom seekers have come true in one, as these 
freedom lovers have settled in a land of promise 
which is a common meeting-place for them all. 



44 THE LAND OF PROMISE 



CHAPTER HI 

VISIT TO THE CENTRAL STATES 

It was my experience to enter the United States by 
way of Canada, and from thence to pass via Montreal 
and the Grand Trunk Railway into the Central States 
of America. 

After a night in the great squared city of Toronto, 
I crossed expanses of blue as of the sky upon the 
waters of the oval-shaped Lake Ontario. I ascended 
the Niagara River gorge, down which the water of 
that immense hollow, which had been pressed into 
the surface of the continent by the ice of the latest 
glacial age, boil and storm in the lower levels. The 
United States I entered at Lewiston, so that the front 
belt of the amazing cities of the east coast was left 
altogether to the rear. 

I realised that I was coming into a great world- 
heart when Niagara was shown me. The Falls were 
as a drama of that liquid cosmic energy which sculp- 
tures continents ; but which, too, can fill a giant city, 
like Buffalo, with lightning lamps and thundering 
moving cars. The town of Niagara was all sportive, 



VISIT TO THE CENTRAL STATES 45 

restless, guide-ridden. The water monster itself was 
crowned on the top with a diadem of waves rushing 
towards the smoothened brink. I was conscious that 
I was in the heart of a continent and contemplated a 
bound onwards of the giant's pulse of life. The mist 
arising in the Horse Shoe Falls was filled with rain- 
bows, and the waters which washed a thousand cities, 
and carried a merchant marine of vast fleets of com- 
merce and of passengers, here tumbled from their 
headway as they sawed backwards the water canyon 
of the fissure in the rocks every year so many feet or 
inches, from where the melting ice-mountains of a 
former Glacial Age had first of all broken into the 
mouth of Ontario Lake, and thence gone down to the 
ocean. 

Here is a spectacular unveiling of the secular ages. 
All that long gorge had been sawn into by the waters 
of the lakes since the very latest of the Ice Ages. 
This, at the rate of even one foot per annum, meant 
tens of thousands of years, since the first coming of 
the present glow of warmth, which made America 
habitable for man. But that nightmare of the Moun- 
tain of Ice was only the beginning of the geological 
vistas. There were amazing tropical forests within 
sight behind, filled with panthers and other beasts of 
prey. Behind Niagara, and behind the forests, icy 
desolation once more ; behind this, warmth, and 
animals far more terrible and strange, megatheriums, 



46 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

plesiosaurs, the air filled with flying reptiles which 
foreboded air-ships. Behind these terrors again, 
almost illimitable expanses of years and oceans and 
sediments, risings and submergings, brittle forests, 
backwards into seas filled with huge articulate trilo- 
bites, and beyond that age again, the primitive sea, 
which had settled upon the world after the terrible 
heat of the basal molten rocks had cooled off. This 
solemn weight of falling waters recalled a downpour 
once big enough to wash the earth itself with waters 
on the birthday of the sea. Niagara, thus express- 
ing a world's outflow of waters, from the ice-pressed 
inland hollow over a great rock-bed, is an epitome of 
the inter-connections of the forces and laws which 
laid out the earth for man. 

I left the scene for Buffalo, arriving after dark, 
and left this city again at midnight ; and after a few 
glimpses at Erie in the night atmosphere, next morn- 
ing we were in the heart of Ohio. 

A day's rushing through a seeming dust-Sahara 
had its anti-climax in the little Indiana wood-city of 
Franklin. This is a land of an Indian red sun, and 
sunsets of crimson blaze amid the bent green spikes 
of the seven-foot American 'corn.' Here for three 
months my duties obliged me to reside. The site 
was all on the fresh grass of what seemed one single, 
well-watered, extending lawn. Each street, shaded 
unto coolness with its doubled avenues of trees, had 



VISIT TO THE CENTRAL STATES 47 

pretty, white, green, or simply polished wooden 
houses, perched some space apart on either side, but 
not far enough apart to prevent them becoming at 
night one long corridor, under the trees, of chatter- 
ing social intercourse. The entire population then 
lounged on rocking-chairs on their verandahs, or 
swung in nets, and talked across to each other from 
house to house, suggesting that the city was all one 
settlement of relatives and friends. 

After seeing the ' merchants ' lolling about daily at 
their leisure, with the ease and independence of 
English clubmen, as they wandered in groups down 
to await the mail distribution at the post-office, or 
strolled in twos or threes to watch the giant bell- 
ringing engine lead the one big train of the day 
through the street, on the pretext to see who had 
come into town, I saw that I was in the world where 
the shopkeeper and his mannerisms of subservience 
had ceased to be. 

Except for some German tradesmen. Irishmen 
employed as flagmen at the railway crossings, and 
some prosperous Irish farmers in the rich pastures 
and cornlands, almost every citizen was native born. 
Their ancestors had probably settled here from Ohio 
and the south-east nearly a century ago. Outside 
the Baptist College no one knew anything of 
England since the date of George the Third. All 
were skilled amateur mechanics, I never saw a 



48 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

man among them who was in a hurry, or who was 
not at his ease. 

The American outside the bustling cities is the 
most leisurely, loitering, sociable individual one can 
discover. He links all work with talks with neigh- 
bours and passers-by. But what he does effect is put 
through with the greatest skill, and clever execution. 

Every one drives about in buggies. It is practi- 
cally impossible not to drive. Only at the serious 
risk of giving offence may one walk out to view the 
country ; because every one who drives by offers 
you most pressing invitations, though to a perfect 
stranger, to have a ride. 

No one was poor ; none were very rich ; all were 
contented. 

There was an honoured veteran of the Civil War 
about these parts, with many a story to recall as to 
the fury of the battles he had fought in against the 
terrible Southerners. 

Others remembered the famous * Morgan's Raid,' 
a foraying sally of the dashing Southern chief named 
Morgan, who played the pirate with Indiana stores 
and granaries, when most of the Indiana men were 
on the front line of the battle. 

Indian corn or wheat fields were on every side in 
great abundance, and the neighbourhood was thick- 
set with grapes and vineyards. Hogs were reared in 
numbers and sent to Indianapolis. 



VISIT TO THE CENTRAL STATES 49 

The chief event of the year was the County Fair. 
Here there were tents set up for every kind of amuse- 
ment. But interest all centred on the trotting races, 
where the local farmers — the champion of them an 
old man with a goatee beard — showed the prowess 
of their horses in trotting at a tremendous rate. The 
racer was perched behind on a tiny seat of the sulky, 
above two shafted wheels. All the world applauded 
every local success. 

Southward of the town was a negro settlement of 
neat little cabins surrounded with Indian corn and 
vine-trees. The coloured folk had plots of land. 
They gardened for others, or worked on the railroads 
and elsewhere. Their easy, happy, ever-singing 
ways contrasted with the solemn alertness of the 
coloured servant of city offices. They were as differ- 
ent as can be from these their salary-earning brethren 
of the northern cities. 

There had been canning factories in the neighbour- 
hood ; but the tariff-protected ' trust ' had recently 
closed them, and left them desolate, all with a view 
to economy and concentration. The town therefore 
remained a typical country market-town, one out of 
thousands of similar towns in Indiana, southern 
Illinois, and Ohio. There was a Baptist Training 
College, a stately building with lawns and protect- 
ing avenues of trees. Baseball was played with all 
vigour, notwithstanding the tropical weather. Be- 

D 



50 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

sides this centre of culture, every one read the New 
York periodicals, and the Indianapolis and Cincinnati 
dailies, with theirgreatSunday magazine supplements. 
Moreover there was a little daily Franklin paper which 
all citizens read. It was of four pages, and about 
the length and breadth of a small quarto sheet. 
This ' daily ' was a medium for the social items of 
all the inhabitants. Every going or coming, or social 
or family party, was duly recorded in its columns. 
The editor was not without a sense of humour in 
his descriptions of the doings of the local leaders. 

In the season of the fall I left Indiana for Nebraska, 
and on the way thither I stayed for one day only in 
Chicago ; though I saw this city again on the way 
backwards from the West. 

Chicago is no mere industrial capital or centre of 
any single great American zone of industry. It is 
rather the capital of other capitals of various great 
industries around the middle West. Chicago is thus 
the imperial site of the organic inter-connections of 
commerce and industry of the great plains and great 
lakes of the American continent. St. Paul, for in- 
stance, the grain and milling capital of the wheatland 
dominion of Minnesota, is put in touch through 
Chicago with Omaha and Kansas City, the capitals 
of the packing industry. 

Chicago exchanges a continent's produce for the 
beer of Milwaukee, which is drunk by the German 



VISIT TO THE CENTRAL STATES 51 

millions in the plains of the Mississippi valley. 
Chicago brings due exchange to Indianapolis for the 
gatherings of this hog-capital. It gathers timber 
from the lake cities and from Canada, forwarding it 
to neighbouring manufacturing centres to return 
again as domestic and office furniture. It takes in 
roll-top desks from Grand Rapids, breakfast foods 
from Battle Creek. It receives iron from iron 
capitals, beef from beef capitals. It stretches out a 
hand for the iron and copper ore, from across and 
around the lakes, and sends it through the long 
drainage canals which tap Lake Michigan and the 
Laurentian basin down into the Mississippi, which 
flows into the Gulf of Mexico. 

Chicago is the exchange and mart of a surround- 
ing circle of great cities : Milwaukee, Pere Marquette, 
Duluth, Sault Ste. Marie to the northern boundary 
of the circle ; St. Paul, Minneapolis, Dubuque, 
on the north-western confines ; Davenport, Des 
Moines, Sioux City, Omaha, Council Bluffs, Bur- 
lington, on the western boundary ; St. Joseph, the 
Kansas Cities, and Jefferson, on the south-west ; 
St. Louis, Springfield, Alton, Cairo, Evansville, 
to the south ; and Indianapolis, Logansport, Fort 
Wayne, Toledo, Detroit and Saginaw rounding off 
the rim of this great surrounding city-circle in the 
central plains of America. Each one of these sisterly 
cities is itself a centre of smaller children towns. 



52 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

This imperial position of Chicago amid the other 
capitals of the food centre of America gives Chicago 
the supreme centralised control of freight and pas- 
senger traffic. Chicago is the first natural stopping- 
place in a long journey from east to west. It is but 
eighteen hours in time from New York. In Chicago 
at least twenty-six railroads have their terminals or 
vital junctions, in intimate touch with the Atlantic 
and Pacific oceans, the great lakes, the Gulf of 
Mexico, the great riparian entrepots, and all that 
lies between. 

All civilisations dependent on the hazards of every 
increase or decrease of industrial demand and output 
are subject to ups and downs in their business re- 
lationships. But with its imperial sway over all these 
other cities and their respective zones of commerce 
and industry, Chicago is also a storm-centre of the 
fluctuations of fortunes of a magnitude unknown in 
any other place. 

The very weather of Chicago, with its sudden fluc- 
tuations of forty or more degrees of temperature, 
seems to fraternise with its fluctuations in the sphere 
of the industrial outlook. 

The variations in the output of wheat, corn, barley, 
broom-corn, iron, copper, coal, in the belt of cities 
and industrial areas in the environment, react at 
once upon the Chicago markets. 

The shortened demand in all or any of these 



VISIT TO THE CENTRAL STATES 53 

centres for any staple line of goods tells at once also 
in the prices quoted in the Chicago exchanges. 

In all these fluctuations some make fortunes ; 
others, losing them, remain as social or industrial 
pariahs. The ^ bear ' of the grain-pit makes a pro- 
spective fortune by selling in the hope that the value 
of the property of others will fall to the ground. 
Moreover he helps to beat down prices by every kind 
of ingenious artifice. The ^ bull ' makes a fortune by 
anticipating the prospective fortunes of others, and 
by inducing them to sell that the increment may 
become his own. 

The majority, playing against loaded dice, lose in 
either case, whether values run up or down, as by 
inevitable decree. But no one loses without having 
wherewith to lose. And when the millions of pro- 
ducers have suddenly and inadvertently created a 
millionaire by their unwitting free contributions, they 
retain enough in tens of thousands of cases to be- 
come well-to-do citizens, thankful still for mercies 
which are by no means small. 

Of course the big or little inflowings of crops and 
outputs from the surrounding regions infallibly leave 
an ever-acting tidal washing of derelict men behind 
them upon Chicago's industrial shore. 

If all has been cheapened, many are ruined be- 
cause they bought their goods for more and now 
sell to lose. If all is heightened in price, more 



54 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

still are ruined because they cannot buy to sell with 
profit. 

Moreover the mercurial business weather of 
Chicago is the less controllable through the city's 
inability to raise its million or more of foreigners to 
a full sense of responsible citizenship. In no city of 
America are the ' outs ' so much out of power, and 
the ' ins ' so much in the seat of authoritative control. 

Chicago is a great reforming civic centre, but the 
difficulty is that the raging waves of industrial and 
commercial fluctuations are so inevitable, and the 
masses are so inert, that assimilation to American 
culture happens more slowly in Chicago than in any 
other great city of the American Union. 

This is sensationally proved by the ease with which 
a Dowie here will find a hearing, while he met with 
an icy reception from New York. Dowie was, how- 
ever, only one out of a long roll of revivalists who 
find in Chicago a prepared place for them as the 
storm-centre of emotionalism in religion. Every- 
where one meets in Chicago crowds of the simplest 
European peasants who form most of the material for 
these end-of-the-world appeals. With a little outer 
assimilation, they retain the old mentality of their 
social ranks in the country from which they have 
migrated. 

Mr. Upton Sinclair's book, The Jungle^ is a Dant- 
esque sketch of the life of immigrants in the stock- 



VISIT TO THE CENTRAL STATES 55 

yard environment of Chicago. As those storm-blown 
unfortunates of the city of doom, so here the Lithua- 
nian immigrants are for ever chance-swept upon the 
waves of fortune. They become helplessly immersed 
in the trough of the great periodic depressions of 
local trading. 

Exaggerated as may have been Mr. Sinclair's re- 
puted facts, it is true that Chicago's successful but 
almost anarchic industrial individualism has an evil 
obverse side, which will only cease to be when the 
best ideals of America, as realised elsewhere, have 
also stamped themselves here. 

In size Chicago is the biggest city in all the five 
continents of the globe. It runs for about forty miles 
along the south-western shores of Lake Michigan, 
and for nearly twenty miles inland from the lake. 
Placed in Surrey and Sussex, Chicago would extend 
from Croydon, through most of Surrey, and all the 
width of Sussex, down to Brighton on the south 
coast. The business section is a narrow division 
well to the lower end of the lake, and surrounded by 
the loops of interconnecting railroads. Beyond the 
business section the streets and houses are well- 
spaced, accounting for the occupation of so vast a 
city area by a population of only two millions. The 
railway works and the packing centres are to the 
west, inland. 

My first impressions of a supreme American city 



56 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

were taken as I left the hotel on arriving at night at 
the Adams Street Station. I walked through some 
of the deserted business area amid the blocks of sky- 
scraper buildings. There were blazing lights in 
many of the ground-floors, but the flanks of the huge 
structures were all darkened above. The summit of 
the buildings was quite invisible, giving the feeling 
of walking through pit-like streets somewhere in the 
depths of the earth, the mouth of the pit above being 
beyond the reach of sight. When I returned to the 
same scenes next day the tide of life and animation 
filled these sites of a former deserted night gloom to 
the full. 

I remember one Chicago scene : horses' hoofs were 
striking fire from the unevenly laid stone pavement, 
in a raging attempt to keep their pace while draw- 
ing their loads of freight. The stream of rushing 
vehicles was too closely packed together for any foot- 
passenger to cross the street. Suddenly there was 
a halt along the great right-sided wagon troop, 
engineered by giant Irish, red-faced, talkative police- 
men. A great bridge swung aside, and what I at 
first imagined to be a fleet of ships passed cross-ways 
to the street. I then saw that it was a grain-bearing 
^whaleback,' a portentous lake barge, rounded on 
top like the back of a whale and as long as an 
ocean liner, which travels on the Great Lakes. The 
monster glided along the nightmare drainage canal, 



VISIT TO THE CENTRAL STATES 57 

which has forced the flow of the Chicago River back- 
wards from the Michigan and St. Lawrence system, 
into the Mississippi, the barge and the river both 
being the colour of mud. 

In the next street the remedy for these appalling 
blockages had already been achieved by subways, 
where the trams and street traffic dip under the big 
canal to the opposite side. 

The struggle and the pandemonium of some 
Chicago streets outclassed every sort of rush and 
tumble in other cities, including even the worst 
portions of New York. 

By the lake shore was, on this occasion, a wilder- 
ness of wreckage, and one staccato white building 
remaining from the great World's Show of seven 
years back, in which Chicago entered the world in a 
new role, to her, as the bearer of light. In other 
parts of the city there were shanties of houses with 
wide streets, bearing away in a straight line for miles, 
with side-walks made of cross rows of rotten and 
rotting planks, high enough to be of deadly danger 
to the ankles and bones of pedestrians. The street 
looked as if it had been cleaned never at all. 

After all, however, what things savoured of Erebus 
here were but the rough and grimy expressions of 
the work of a world-workshop, wherein goods are 
gathered from afar, and transmuted for the use and 
service of appreciable portions of the human-kind. 



58 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

What seems unhuman about all these vulcan ways 
of energy is that they should not be earth concealed 
and earth contained. The modern underground 
freight passage-way for all the business sections of 
the city must have considerably humanised Chicago. 
Meanwhile there are whole square miles of resi- 
dential Chicago which compare well with any Ameri- 
can city in the matter of parks, avenues, and grass 
plots around the houses. Early in the afternoon I 
visited the handsome Lincoln Park ; but towards 
dusk of the same day duty obliged me to leave by 
the Burlington route for Nebraska. 



THE PRAIRIE-WORLD 59 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PRAIRIE-WORLD 

The deep, clear Mississippi River, which I crossed 
that evening, runs almost due south, within an ap- 
preciable distance from Chicago, from the State of 
Minnesota to St Louis, and thence down into the 
Gulf of Mexico. This plenteous waterway is the 
nominal dividing line of East and West America. 
One who has crossed and settled beyond the Missis- 
sippi has become a 'Westerner.' But as the river 
has always been used for navigation it has brought 
the peoples of either banks together from the begin- 
ning in the use of a common waterway, quite as 
much as it has in other ways kept them apart. 

The same cannot be said of the wild, vast, broad, 
shallow, sandy-coloured affluent of the Mississippi 
called the Missouri, flowing from the north-west 
and joining the Mississippi above St. Louis. On the 
map this affluent looks much larger than the main 
stream. But the reason why the longer stream is 
said to flow into the shorter one is because the 
Mississippi carries a greater and more steady body 



6o THE LAND OF PROMISE 

of waters at the junction. Moreover it was long 
before the huge extent of the Missouri was appreci- 
ated by the canoe-men and trailers by its banks. 

Perhaps a dozen small affluents of the great water- 
course come down from Canada. One important 
affluent, the Milk River, runs into Alberta and returns 
to the States. The Missouri, with its first affluents, 
flows from the region at the north-west of the Yellow- 
stone National Park, itself named from a great 
affluent which joins the Missouri far to the north-east. 
The Missouri first proceeds northwards for more 
than a hundred miles. It then turns round, moves to 
the east, and next falls southward for eight hundred 
miles with two further deflections in the journey 
almost due eastward. All along this way the wide, 
sanded, shallow, tree-marked rivers from the Rocky 
Mountains flow eastwards into the great river in its 
southering course. As the Missouri for all its width 
is of little use for navigation on account of the un- 
certainty of its flow of water and the shallowness of 
the stream in nearly the whole of its length, it 
is more of a dividing line than a joining link, unlike 
its more steady and deeper compeer. Therefore the 
real Western America may be said to be the trans- 
Missouri States. 

There is much connected prairie land that is an 
undulating treeless region in prosperous Iowa, which 
is between Illinois and the Missouri. But the wilder 



THE PRAIRIE-WORLD 6i 

untrammelled prairies are mainly in the Dakotas, 
Montana, and in Nebraska and Kansas, which are 
only watered by the Missouri affluents. 

From the banks of the south-flowing Missouri west- 
wards, one rises steadily, for nearly five hundred miles, 
to the foot of the Rocky Mountains. With the ascent 
the country is ever dryer and dryer, until, beyond the 
hundredth meridian, farming without irrigation be- 
comes precarious. In the mountain region farming 
is never thought of without the aid of irrigation, but 
the downflow of water is plentiful from the mountains, 
where rain and snow are frequent above a certain 
high level. 

Thus we have a huge band of country touching 
the out towns of the Chicago radius like Omaha, 
near the junction of the Platte with the Missouri, 
and watered only by sandy, shallow, winding, east- 
bearing streams which flow from the mountains or 
high-level slopes, and after a slow tedious course, 
reach the Missouri river. This is the great region 
of the rolling prairies of the Western States, where, 
as the railroads approached in the 'seventies and 
'eighties, several million buffaloes were shot down 
in a few years, and the entire race was extinguished. 

Since also the railroad gridiron has been laid down 
on the prairies of Central West America, the revolu- 
tionary cultivator has done for the prairie-world of 
the vagrant Indian hunter, much the same as the 



62 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

Red Indians themselves had done for the wood-world 
of a former trans-Missouri. 

The herds of American bison, some decades ago, 
were really the imported stock of the Indians. Geo- 
logy teaches that only a few centuries previously, the 
bison came through the Rockies and found the limit 
of his tether in Kentucky and Tennessee. The prairie 
fires, the story of which delights the boy readers of 
the pages of Mayne Reid, were originated by Indians 
who wanted to clear the field of trees and brushwood 
to make room for the pastures of their life-sustaining, 
monstrous, shaggy-headed buffalo herds. Much of 
the now treeless West may have been a forest for- 
merly, before the Indian incendiaries came upon the 
scene. Now the only visible trees in a day's train- 
journey are the newly-planted brilliant green alamos 
in every settlement, and the serpentine, interminable, 
arboreal alleys about the creeks. Through all these 
hundreds of miles, the train's advent has occasioned 
the cutting up of the regions into farms, and has 
displaced Indian and buffalo together. Old buffalo 
horns are scattered still about the pasture, and deep 
pestled wallowings still bear witness of his departed 
race. The farmers of the dry region lament the 
departed glories of the self-made hay of the stiff 
buffalo grass. If it now grew plentifully, standing 
erect as it did till March, it might have fed their stock 
through much of the winter. 



THE PRAIRIE-WORLD 63 

The prairie lands are a belt of about three hundred 
or four hundred miles in width from east to west, 
and one thousand miles in length from north to south. 
The prevailing winds are made up of alternating 
currents of air from the north or back again from the 
south, and the marks of their recurring sweepings are 
on all the rounded scenery. These prairies are formed 
by the washing downwards of the great earth cover 
from the western highlands, themselves heaved up- 
wards by cosmic force. They roll like ocean waves 
in all their hundred miles of width. They are of a 
rich brown colour during most of the year. They 
are alchemised into deep kingly purple when seen 
from a distance from their bluff headings. 

I got a fair view of this formation after I had 
crossed to the dry, flat, sandy region called formerly 
the Great American Desert,^ west of cultivation, 
where the cowboys hold their undisputed sway. 

One night after dark I arrived at a settlement on 
the extreme north-west margin of Kansas named St. 
Francis. It had taken the entire afternoon to travel 
the seventy miles in an ^accommodation' train. This 
species of train is exceedingly trying to the temper 
because it earns its name of * accommodation ' by 
obliging all the world it meets upon the journey. 
At each station the goods cars are taken, or left, or 

^ This name is now used for the flat alkaline desert south-west of Salt 
Lake. 



64 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

shunted, the passengers get out for an hour or so, 
and if any one wants to stay a bit longer, he shouts 
to the conductor that he will be back at such and such 
a time. When everything and every one has been 
gathered up, the train starts with a terrifying jerk. 
A judge was going on circuit on this occasion, and 
he was treated with countless ' How dy, judge ! ' and 
much patting on the back. At Attwood towards 
evening the judge was to get out, many friends want- 
ing him to see them. The judge, though friendly 
and familiar, preserved his dignity. He told them 
he had about fifty cases to settle, and he could not 
see any one until about 9.30. As I met him 
returning the next morning at 7 a.m., I concluded 
that these must have been either undefended cases or 
else permits for marriage. In the morning light I 
was to have the unique experience of slowly travel- 
ling into the margin of the rolling prairie from these 
high desert lands. On leaving St. Francis, which 
was on the border of the western desert, a blazing 
sun rose upon a dry grass land as flat as a lawn, 
reaching as far as the eye could see. The scene was 
still and peace-giving, the change from the prairie 
where I had been staying to the uncultivated flat- 
lands creating a surprising sensation of being lost 
for ever in a plain beyond the world. The centre of 
the flatlands was a place called Bird City, which 
could be seen from forty miles away through an 



THE PRAIRIE-WORLD 65 

almost perpetual mirage from the watersheds above 
Indianola, in Nebraska. Whether the name St. 
Francis had suggested for Bird City its name, or the 
few poultry I saw in the single ranche and couple of 
other houses of the place, I do not know. Beyond 
these, on the way eastward, the first narrow cracks 
in the flatlands began. These opened out and the 
various sections of the flatlands rounded off the 
gullies, deepening down to gorges that lead to the 
Beaver River. In these cosy hollows the cattle of 
the ranchemen would gather for protection from the 
wind. As we journeyed on there were other shorter 
flatlands, which again opened out through cracks 
dividing into sections, which again rounded off", and 
the gullies again ran down to the river. Finally, all 
around, was a wavy earthen sea. 

Here, then, was the philosophy of the great rolling 
plains of America. They are a belt of lands running 
a thousand miles north and south and are several 
hundred miles wide, and immensely fertile where it 
rains sufficiently. They are a series of rounded-off 
steps on the descent through to the Missouri bed a 
few hundred feet high, each of gigantean length. In 
relative altitude, however, the western head of the 
prairie is not so much lower than the footlands of 
the Rocky Mountains two hundred miles beyond 
St. Francis. St. Francis itself was nearly three 
thousand feet above sea-level. The entire prairie 

E 



66 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

was a breaking away from this level, first from the 
great grass flatlands and thence from the minor 
stages. All the great rollings of about one hundred 
and fifty feet from head to base immediately now 
fit into order. Seen from the west, above the river, 
there is no hillock, but mere cuttings down into the 
ground. Seen from the east each bluff rises, ever 
steep, and sometimes vertically, from the bed of the 
river. All beyond the river is a gradual, weather- 
beaten rounding off of the earth's surface, falling 
down even lower from west to east, with here and 
there a miniature canyon or gully winding its way 
down to the river bed. These bluffs, one hundred 
and twenty feet high, are simple heaps of the finest 
soil in the world. Until twenty years ago they were 
all free ranche lands and covered with stiff buffalo 
grass, which is ashen blue for one or two months 
and then dries, standing stiff. It proved as ex- 
cellent a fodder for cowboy herds of cattle as it had 
been for the bison. Twenty years ago many Minne- 
sota workers were induced to take up quarter-sections. 
They ploughed up the buffalo grass and waited for 
rain, which comes, alas ! on an average only in three 
years out of ten. Those three years are incredibly 
prosperous, but the other seven years of drought have 
had the effect of putting most of the farms into the 
hands of money-lenders, who themselves now are 
unable to work them or to rent or sell them, A very 



THE PRAIRIE-WORLD 67 

thrifty farmer will keep his farm going by small crops 
of Indian corn and pigs and cattle. He will live on 
produce without any cash for two or three years. At 
the end of that time he will be blessed with almost 
miraculous crops, out of which he must meet all lia- 
bilities for the next two years at least in the way of 
clothing, furniture, and luxuries of life. If he is 
blessed with a second year of plenty he is likely to 
migrate into a more auspicious clime, or else he will 
buy a plot of land in the valley which he can irrigate 
for the four crops of the wondrous vivid green alfalfa, 
a giant clover, which will give him all the fodder 
required for the year. 

At the present moment deliverance is fast coming 
to the oppressed farming population, to be won by the 
Government's Reclamation Service, which has begun 
to spend millions a year in reservoirs and irrigation 
canals. The scope of the Government's labours, 
during the last two years, has suddenly expanded, 
until it rivals in proportions and significance, even 
the digging of the Panama Canal. Reservoirs, re- 
miniscent of Assouan, are being projected in many 
a site, to store up the waters of storms and swollen 
torrents, against the season of dearth. Already 2000 
miles of canals are in preparation to carry the irriga- 
tion waters to this deep, rich, but arid soil. Nearly 
20,000 hands have been set to dig and reclaim, in 
this undertaking, in Federal fee. It is contemplated 



68 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

setting aside $50,000,000 for seven important pro- 
jects of the north-west alone. In a valley parallel 
to the Republican River, but further south, beet 
raisers have been allowed a quarter of a million for 
pumping up what is called the 'underflow.' And 
no one who has observed the depth and quality of 
the soil about these parts can doubt but that these 
Government projects will yield their very high per- 
centage of returns. 

On these expectant, wind-swept prairies of brown 
Nebraska, almost beyond the western limit of rain, 
the bright blue of the sky goes down, unyellowed and 
unwhitened, right on to the horizon. On every side 
around, looking in the distance like giant sunflowers, 
arose the windmills of the German and Bohemian 
settlers. Unless clouds were layered across the sky, 
revealing its true perspective, there was no impres- 
sion of distance from the untainted blue ; or else, it 
may be said, distances reigned there without measure, 
and were illimitable. At times the sky was clearly 
divided into twenty or more parts by twenty sculptured 
arches of rainbow-tinted or bright red cloud, radiat- 
ing from the sun, and converging opposite the sun 
into a gigantic star. At other times a single column 
of crimson would arise straight upwards in the west, 
* over the foundered sun.' Few observers, it seems, 
had ever watched this atmospheric effect ; for on one 
occasion, when I was in the county capital, the wife 



THE PRAIRIE-WORLD 69 

of a citizen rushed in, in terror, saying that the end 
of the world was approaching, since there was a 
column of fire in the west rising up to the zenith, 
and, as she would have it, portending the end of all 
things. Once also, from the bluff, I saw an atmo- 
spheric reproduction of a semblance to the miracle of 
the plain of Ajalon. Just as the sun was disappear- 
ing, and for about a quarter of an hour afterwards, a 
crimson cloud, all luminous, approached along the 
valley of the Republican River to within the distance 
of a few miles. Its glow was not like the merely 
aerial colours in ordinary sunsets, but it seemed to 
own a corporeal presence, with a distinct luminosity, 
as of brilliant particles. Appearing in a neighbour- 
hood noted for mirage effects, the illusion was evi- 
dently caused by some refraction of the sun's light, 
which broke into and illuminated the mist that was 
rising above the part of the valley of the river where 
the irrigation, in the vicinity of the little city of 
McCook, occasioned atmospheric moisture. 

I used to wander during the ever-bright afternoons 
amid the earthen bluffs cut out by the river in its 
long descent to the Missouri. Here there were wild 
grapes and plums, but no living creatures except 
grasshoppers and snakes. Not far away were the 
pasture lands, whence every evening a little girl of 
ten, after school, would drive home a herd of great 
cattle to the ranche. I traced up the course of the 



70 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

winding river where the trees hugged the water- 
courses, there being no other conspicuous vegetation. 
The river was fordable, running its shallow course 
over a wide and sandy bed. There were turtles in 
the pools, and tortoises crept about its verdant 
borders. 

Thus the long season of the fall glided by, though 
one could sit out and read under the invariable 
blue of heaven even until December. At length 
the storm time came, the sky being now either over- 
clouded with dust, while the sun appeared a dull 
yellow ochre colour, or else, in January, a blizzard 
swept the hills, scarcely allowing any of the snow to 
lay its friendly mantle over the autumn-sown wheat 
and Indian corn. The temperature dropped down 
one morning to thirty degrees below zero. The river 
was solidly blocked with ice. There were now at 
times false suns in the sky, and huge circles of light 
about twenty degrees away from it would surround 
the sun. This was the effect of the sun's light 
falling upon particles of snow in high altitudes. 

The religion of perhaps a majority of people in the 
neighbourhood was Catholic, although most of the 
Catholics lived outside the town limits. No severity 
of weather would prevent a number of pious German 
and Irish Catholics from attending the Sunday mass. 
The type of faith of the German and Bohemian settlers 
was a sturdy one. It had been broadened by associa- 



THE PRAIRIE-WORLD 71 

tions with men of other religions and races and by 
the experience of free political institutions. The 
trustees of the national public school, which is the 
mainspring of character and ideality in the hopes of 
the people, were mostly Catholics, who were, none 
the less, as jealous as any other Western Americans 
for the perpetuation of the undenominational system. 
Some of these men I nevertheless once heard treating 
with the bishop of the diocese for the erection of a 
Catholic school, which they were willing under 
certain conditions to found, but none of them ever 
dreamed of asking that it should be paid for by non- 
Catholics. There was a flourishing school, taught 
by Sisters, across the border at Herndon, in Kansas, 
with a very large attendance, the children being wont 
to drive in from the neighbouring farms, no parents 
ever allowing their children to travel any considerable 
distance on foot. Where there were only two or three 
children in a household they would make up a party 
with some neighbours' children and drive off together, 
or else two or three children mounted a great horse 
and rode to school. 

Democracy in Nebraska means an all-round friend- 
liness and equality. The banker, a State senator, 
would come down his steps every day and talk freely 
with unshaven but interesting ne'er-do-wells. There 
was a giant Dane, a blacksmith, named Andersen, a 
cultivated man, who had parted company with his 



72 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

brother in Los Angeles, on account, he said, of his 
abhorrence of the sectionalism of service in city life. 
He preferred the comparative desert to an unequal 
social world. On Sunday, occasionally, I would 
dine with some of the chief merchants in neighbour- 
ing Cambridge, a ^ city ' of nine hundred inhabitants, 
with neat, white-painted, green-rimmed houses amid 
groves of alamos. The party sat down perhaps with 
fourteen or fifteen to the table. It invariably happened 
that, five minutes after dinner was served on the table, 
a sturdy, foreign-born young woman would enter and 
solemnly take her place with all the guests. She was 
the hired 'help,' otherwise 'scullery maid,' but was 
as much at home in talking as any one else at the 
table. I have known the great trans-continental 
express of the Chicago and Burlington to stop for 
a lowly servant-girl, who wished to visit her father 
who was gravely sick. 

English servant-girls who venture to big cities far 
west sometimes experience romance. One of two 
sisters became the wife of a Texas rancheman ; the 
other was wooed and won by a wealthy citizen. She 
was sent to the high school, and also taught by pro- 
fessionals all the arts of refinement. Being married, 
she was wont to drive about in a handsome victoria 
buggy with a pair of horses, the equal of any lady in 
that city of ten miles in length. 

The only social distinctions which existed were 



THE PRAIRIE-WORLD 73 

between the anti-saloon party and the pro-saloon 
party. In Nebraska, Local Option prevails ; and 
is as great a success as Total Prohibition is a failure 
across the Kansas border. At Cambridge, fifteen 
miles away, which I attended every fortnight, there 
was no saloon. It was the custom of a certain in- 
veterate tippler, an immigrant, to save up his earn- 
ings during the month and then drive over to 
Indianola, where there was a saloon in one ward 
of the town. The next morning the horse and 
buggy would be found about ownerless, and the 
too jovial settler was invariably in the ditch. It 
was this kind of scene which made the leading 
citizen of Indianola, a banker, an Irishman, and a 
Republican, support what he called the * Social 
Taboo ' against drink. He said to me : ' You have 
made it unfashionable in England for gentlemen to 
boast of drinking ; we also want to make it un- 
fashionable and socially disreputable to enter a 
saloon ! ' He was as good as his word, and was 
strongly supported by the denominations in this 
* Social Taboo.' In his own ward the saloon was 
kept away ; in the second ward of the ' city' a saloon 
was allowed to run by aid of about seven loafers, 
whose vote was controlled by free drinks, and also 
by the needs of the German and Bohemian farmers, 
who drove in from the farm for their customary 
glass of beer. Among the elder generation of 



74 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

these foreigners, though not for the English-speak- 
ing world, drink was held to be excusable. 

The alternating north and south winds which drive 
up and down the prairies, almost immediately tan 
the faces of the grown-up inhabitants of these parts. 
Added to that, their workaday clothes were in keep- 
ing with the colour of the greenless ground. On the 
contrary, the children of Indianola, often brightly 
dressed — the girls in hats of red, blue, and grey; 
neither with faces pale, as in the East, but perennially 
fresh and fair; nor with figures frail as in Indiana, but 
well built and muscular, arrayed with an unending 
smile — seemed to be, and were, the true aristocracy of 
the place. The majority of their parents were unedu- 
cated, but the care taken over the education of the 
Western children surpasses, I believe, that of any 
Eastern State. Girls of twelve can tell you all the 
characteristics of the chief American poets. I have 
seen them sitting in council together engaged in 
animated discussion on learned topics. In fact the 
elder girls and young women form a distinct circle 
of culture which is fed by literary papers such as the 
Bookman^ the Literary Digest^ and Current Litera- 
ture. Add to these the monthly general periodicals 
and also novels. In this struggling village of six 
hundred inhabitants there were two places where 
I could buy Ruskin's minor works, which were kept 
in stock as suitable presents for the young folk, 



THE PRAIRIE-WORLD 75 

together with handsome editions of poets like Long- 
fellow, Whittier, Tennyson, and ^ Owen Meredith.' 

There were apparently three weekly newspapers 
published in Indianola. Two of these, named the 
Red Willow Republican^ and the Red Willow Sun^ 
were in reality the same sheet, but for a single 
variant column. Issued by the same publisher they 
each contained separate political reports, one from 
the state Republican headquarters, and the other 
from the Democratic. Politics raged fiercely that 
year, as a presidential election was on. The Demo- 
cratic candidate for the United States presidency 
hailed, too, from this state of Nebraska. This was 
the redoubtable orator, William Jennings Bryan. 
These Western Democrats are radicals to a man, 
and have no relationship, more than a mechanical 
one, with certain city Democrats and others of the 
Eastern and Southern States. The whirlwind orator, 
nicknamed ^ Cyclone ' Davis, came up in the Demo- 
cratic interest from Texas, and Senator Allen and 
many others spoke. 

The then * Governor,' Theodore Roosevelt, who 
was standing for the vice-presidency, had been made 
the target of abusive attack, not of the sort common 
perhaps in France, but indulged in as pugilism is, 
within the bounds of a definite code, and fiercer 
by far than the oratorical onslaughts habitual in 
England. On the night when I first visited McCook, 



76 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

the capital of the county, the enraged Governor 
arrived from the coast on his way through, deter- 
mined to vindicate himself. During the forty minutes' 
address he delivered at McCook that evening, he 
spoke scarcely a word about McKinley's policy, but, 
to the rapt delight of the audience, he talked in cow- 
boy slang with live figures of speech, taken from the 
vocabulary of cattle management, against each and 
all of his personal assailants. Of course this talk 
carried the audience away, and it left such an effect 
that, after its deliverance, the enemy was no more to 
be found about those parts. The county of Red 
Willow as a result swung over from Bryan to 
McKinley. 

When spring at length arrived I was not fated to 
see the fulness of its regeneration in these parts. 
The grass had been brown and withered since last 
July, but what the change is like on the prairie I can 
add from what I subsequently saw. I went out one 
Saturday to a town situated as within the jaws of a 
canyon mouth which opened from mighty hills. 
From north and south of the canyon the hills fell 
down as the steep shores of an ocean, but on to the 
surface of the illimitable plain. On that warm spring 
day the ground was still brown though the atmo- 
sphere was moist. During the night a gentle rain 
fell. The following afternoon I climbed up part of 
the mountain ramparts, and where I had seen it brown 



THE PRAIRIE-WORLD 77 

and earthy-coloured the day before, it was, to-day, all 
lightly flushed with gentle ashen-green, as far on the 
horizon as I could see, for about eighty miles. In a 
single night the sheaves or blades of the delicate ash- 
tree tinted buffalo grass had opened, and the regene- 
ration called the Spring had taken place. Only 
those who have seen no green grass for nine months 
can realise the force of this sudden and, as it were, 
sacramental change. 

In Nebraska, however, when the first little flowers 
came, rising up not more than one or two inches 
from the ground, but beautifully coloured, and of a 
family whose name I could not find, it was time 
for me to leave. On the 8th day of May I went 
down to the station, but hearing that the night train 
was two hours late, as may easily happen in the 
crossing of a continent, I returned home. In one 
hour, however, I saw the great Burlington engine 
flash its headlight as it passed by, and I knew that it 
had made up time, and that I was late. Next day, 
then, I took the train eastwards to Oxford, and caught 
the mid-day * flyer,' as the express was called, which 
ran through from Chicago to Denver, over a thousand 
miles, in twenty-six hours. We were not long in 
leaving the rolling prairie, the western margin of 
cultivation without irrigation, and passed through 
an immense, flat, alkali desert, with no signs of life 
upon it but the tufts of dried grass and the wander- 



78 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

ing prairie dogs. I was watching westwards with 
eagerness, and by 3 p.m. at Fort Morgan cloudy 
white specks were visible near the horizon which I 
knew were the mountains. An hour later the great 
rocky wall was well visible, bearing off northwards in 
all its spring magnificence. Long's Peak, 14,121 
feet high, headed the range to the right ; Gray's and 
Torrey's Peaks, 14,443 feet high, were to the south. 
In all about one hundred miles of the mountains 
of the Front Range came into view. Their masses 
rise in portentous piles of granite and gneiss, 
are cut with at least fifty deep canyons, and are 
cloaked up to the timber-line at the elevation of 
11,500 feet with a dark mantle of pine-trees. Above 
the timber-line are huge wastes, rising here and 
there into beautifully sculptured peaks. 



AMERICAN NATIONALISM 79 



CHAPTER V 

COMPARATIVE STUDY OF AMERICAN NATIONALISM 

Before leaving the central scenes of this unified 
civilisation of all America beyond the Alleghanies, 
certain historical comparisons may be helpful in 
order to appreciate the likeness and differences 
between the institutional democracy chiefly of this 
portion of America, and historical parallels. 

Compared with other nations the United States is 
a revolutionary, social experiment aiming at the 
abolition of that one-racial ideal of the modern 
nation, so dear to the heart of Germany, Russia, 
Italy, France, England, and Ireland. 

The United States is a scientific attempt to create a 
fraternal bond between peoples of diverse national 
and racial origin. With a population of which only 
five per cent., in many parts, is of Anglo-Saxon 
descent, America is in no sense a nation in the mean- 
ing of being one in blood-relationship and common 
racial heredity. Probably nine-tenths of the rulers 
of New York, Chicago, and the belt of cities around 
Chicago, are foreign born, or the sons of foreigners. 



8o THE LAND OF PROMISE 

In the various localities or mining districts of the 
United States there is rarely animus enough against 
any particular class of immigrants to pass ordinances 
affecting injuriously any of the white races. The 
Mago/ as the Italian is called, was not always 
admitted into the flourishing mining city of Victor in 
the Cripple Creek district of Colorado ; and there are 
townships where the native Coloradan Mexicans 
suffer a similar restriction. 

Racial antipathies may also come to the front in 
some of the States. Such an antipathy occasioned 
the riotous collision between the Irish and the Jews in 
the east side of New York City. There are colonies 
of Norwegians, Bohemians, Italians, Hungarians, 
Jews and Poles, which for the moment are isolated 
from the rest of the country ; but the tendency these 
cleavages have to terminate is illustrated by the 
gradual decrease in the number of German papers 
published in the almost entirely German city of Mil- 
waukee, where formerly thirty newspapers in German 
were published, while to-day there are but two. 

The one permanent social cleavage is colour. Yel- 
low, Red, and Black races are not destined to be 
incorporated within the future American race, using 
these terms in their more generally accepted senses. 
The social aversion to Mongol and Negro is of course 
essential to the well-being of America. It is a 
tremendous enough experiment to have established 



AMERICAN NATIONALISM 8i 

the fraternisation of all the white races in the world. 
European nations, unlike the United States, impose 
within their national boundaries jealously main- 
tained restrictions upon the attainment or building 
up of a common inter-racial citizenship. Foreigners 
crowd into districts of London, but we do not hear 
that they effectually share in the city government. 
Italians have entered France in parts around Mar- 
seilles, but not to fraternise with Frenchmen in the 
government of the south of France. Germans have 
been expelled from Russia. Poles are being expro- 
priated in Prussian Poland. Canadian fusion, beyond 
Quebec where there is little fusion, is indeed a new 
problem to be faced by the Dominion Government. 
Visitors from the Argentine Republic tell us that the 
various races of emigrants in that rich domain settle 
there as permanently disjecta membra. Racial fusion, 
it may be said, has not yet begun in most countries 
across the seas. In Europe racial fusion is definitely 
set aside. 

For the essential fact of a modern Germany is its 
eternal defiance of the French, Russians, Poles, and 
British. The ideal of an Austrian or Russian Empire 
is the union of many races which never combine in 
the sole tie of a single personal sovereignty. On the 
contrary, the essence of the American national ideal 
is the absolute fraternisation between Americans of 
Anglo-Saxon, of Scottish and Irish, races with the 

F 



82 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

Germans, Scandinavians, Russians, Poles, Hun- 
garians, Bohemians, Austrians, Italians, Sclavo- 
nians, Armenians, Syrians, Greeks. 

The cradling of America, which has gone so very- 
far, could not, however, go beyond a broadly-inter- 
preted white race. The practical reason why, is that 
no advantageous union of whites and coloured nations 
has ever been reported, and no one has the least idea 
that it could ever take place. 

The colour question can only be solved through 
some safe shepherding of the negro race in an orderly 
parallel to white civilisation. And though Mongols 
like the Japanese may be the equals or superiors to 
the majority of Indo-Germans, the question of their 
admission into America as settlers must be naturally 
decided in the negative, until some unlikely reasons 
can be shown for the abridgment of the Asiatic 
Mongolian exclusion. 

The foundation, therefore, of America is, broadly 
speaking, the joining together of the white races of 
mankind, both Indo- Germanic and Semitic, and 
European Mongols into one common institutional 
citizenship. 

The cradling of all this New America is thus not 
even nursed within that racial conglomeration or 
family called the Indo-Germanic race. The Hun- 
garians are Asiatics with European culture ; the 
Armenians are Asiatics with Christian culture, the 



AMERICAN NATIONALISM 83 

Jews are Semites, with an admixture of Mongol 
blood. But the Hungarians make some of the best 
citizens of America, because they are of the small 
number of immigrants who appreciate constitutional 
ideas and the principles of popular government. 

The attempt to create a nation or empire out of an 
international civilisation is not wholly new, but in 
some respects the cradling of America is an adven- 
ture with destiny which has had no compeer down 
the times. No compeer of the American civic com- 
radeship which you witness in any mid-western city 
is found among any nation of history compacted 
upon a tie of blood-kinship such as that tie of kin- ^ 
ship which led the Hebrew conqueror to spare the 
Kenite and put the death-ban on the peoples of 
Canaan. Nor are the old inter-racial empires of 
primitive expansionists comparable to America. 
There is no parallel in Assyria and Babylon with 
their military ascendencies. Nor in Persia, with its 
racial satrapies. Mentored by Aristotle, Alexander 
the Great's hellenising empire, with its too anxious 
anticipation of New York's absorption of the Jewish 
race, against the Maccabees, is a true but rare his- 
torical parallel to the present Americanisation of all 
the races which enter the portals of the American 
commonwealth. Carthage, on the other hand, with 
its commercial suzerainty, was unlike America in 
spite of its anticipation of American commercialism, 



84 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

just because its organisation, outside the Punic race, 
did not rest upon any deeper foundations than com- 
mercialism, such as an inter-racial civic religion. 
Rome, however, the Empire, not the Republic, with 
its expanded citizenship, is probably the truest par- 
allel of the American inter-racial comradeship with 
the ancient world. 

The liberties of an Athens or a Corinth or an 
Ephesus, of a Milan or a Lyons, may not have 
equalled those of an Omaha or a Kansas City. But 
they were, for the most part, all that the citizens of 
these localities required. St. Paul, a Roman neither 
by race nor by residence, nevertheless had rights 
and liberties equal to any who lived in the imperial 
metropolis of Rome. 

Rome's cosmopolitan citizenship was the really 
supreme success of its imperial undertakings. The 
provinces with all these rights and favours were con- 
tented ; but no religion of civic ideals continued as 
of old to inspire the central soul of the Empire. 
Christianity, at the date of its triumph, gave Rome 
no new civic religion which might have recalled to 
life the central energies of the State. Diocletian, the 
great imperial reformer, was instinctively right when 
he had seen that Rome would collapse if its former 
and nobler, but incidentally pagan, ideal succumbed 
before a new religion which had not yet formed its 
model ideals of public citizenship. When Constan- 



AMERICAN NATIONALISM 85 

tine and Theodosius attempted to continue the re- 
forming labours of Diocletian, they were unable to 
unify the new Christian spirit with the sense of public 
citizenship whose animating force was still pagan. 
It was for this reason that both the old empire and 
also paganism, with its relics of a civic religion, came 
to an end at precisely the same date. 

But if Constantine could not re-animate the old 
empire, he at least founded the prospective mediaeval 
empire. For in linking a memory of Imperialism 
with advancing Christianity, when the old empire 
fell, the Christianity which survived carried through 
with itself these memories of Imperialism until the 
Middle Ages. The comity of nations of the Middle 
Ages may be called, metaphorically, a kind of * resur- 
rection body ' to the regenerated soul of the sunken 
empire. The immortal ' ideal ' or ^ soul ' of empire 
had been carried through within a persisting and im- 
mortal Christianity, which centuries of barbarian 
inroads could never overcome, and was ready on a 
fitting occasion to put on a kind of risen body in the 
days of a European ' great pope and great king. * 

Could Christianity, however, have fused with old 
Roman civic religiousness, probably the Roman 
state and church would have been coterminous, even 
to-day, in Latin Europe. Something of the kind, 
where Justinian had Christianised law, kept inter- 
racial eastern Rome vigorous for eight hundred years. 



86 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

The Germano-Roman Feudal Empire, unlike the 
Christian Rome of Theodosius, possessed a civic re- 
ligion in thejus dimnum and^W humanuni^ derived in 
a literal sense from the eastern branch of the Roman 
Empire, but inspired by the Christianised memories of 
old Rome, which persisted in the Western Church. 
There was for a while the semblance of a Christian 
comity of nations, especially in the mediaeval univer- 
sity life, and in the moments of agreement be- 
tween Emperor and Pope. An ideal of their new 
achievement inspired the thought of Dante. This 
feudalism effected for a while an organisation of a 
sort of United States of Europe. More successfully 
than this rather shadowy Imperial partnership of the 
nations, mediaeval Christianity created the half civic 
comradeship of the modern Church of Rome, in- 
destructible, to-day, except by the self-delimitative 
force inherent in the religious Cassar. Yet, once, 
the Temporal claims of the Papacy had helped to 
cradle the modern nations in those principles of dis- 
union, blood- nationalism,, reformationalism, which 
have ushered in modern Europe. Reform, as in 
contrast, had been incited and even, in a sense, 
pioneered, through Rome's own magnificent self- 
assertion in the type of a temporal power joined to 
a religious headship, that any Henry viii. or any 
Calvin could scientifically copy as a pupil from a 
master. 



AMERICAN NATIONALISM 87 

Whatever the justification for this papal over- 
lordship of Europe, it is certain that the Puritan 
Democracy which Calvin founded and the Pilgrims 
brought to Massachusetts, was a contrast, but also 
a parallel, to that great survival of Augustan Im- 
perialism which lived on in the Rome of Leo x. 
and Julius 11. It was thus the counter-imperialism 
of the Puritan Democracy which, more than any 
other influence, went to the moulding of the United 
States into a people built into a nation upon other 
foundations than those of blood nationalism. 

The modern business and race creation of the 
British Empire, cannot, for this reason, be compared 
with the United States, because the real bonds be- 
tween Britain, with Canada, and Australia, and New 
Zealand, and South Africa at present are ' family 
ties,' and the rest is nominal. Only in the last few 
years there has come into being, and grown inten- 
sively, an almost religious respect for inter-union 
between Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and 
South Africa. Yet this growing consciousness of be- 
longing to a transcending empire is not yet wholly 
embodied in any acknowledged ' bund ' of states. 
This idealism may develop into a counterpart of 
that reverence of the lusty northern people for a 
Holy Roman Empire which transcended the then 
existing Rome. But the romanticism of the senti- 
ment has no essential parallel with the closely prac- 



88 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

tical civic religion which makes the United States 
one nation. 

The parallel between the rule of the American 
Republic in the Philippines or Puerto Rico, and 
the rule of the Crown colonies of Great Britain, is a 
question of the modern development of American 
federal authority, and its consideration must remain 
outside the sphere of this work. 

Nor can comparisons, as we have hinted before, as 
yet be made between the United States and particular 
provinces of the family-empire like Canada, Australia, 
or South Africa. In some respects the comparison 
with the outward form of Canada is close. The 
Dominion's sovereign inter- Canadian authority is 
much akin with American federalism. Ottawa, how- 
ever, is stronger than Washington in its exercise of 
sovereign home powers of government. The separate 
provinces of the Dominion only possess predeter- 
mined and constitutionally prescribed rights and 
liberties. A Manitoba, unlike a Georgia or a Kansas, 
does not enjoy all the liberties not specifically re- 
served to the central government. On the other 
hand, in Quebec, racial sectionalism exists, though 
not necessarily in a permanent form. These external 
differences between Canada and the United States 
may not be vital ; but elsewhere there is a far deeper 
cleavage. Canadians, indeed, religiously love Canada 
as well as Americans love America, but the Great 



AMERICAN NATIONALISM 89 

Dominion, never having broken with the conditions 
in which it started, of union with an older country, 
has never had to seek for the consecration of its exist- 
ence in a constitutive civic religion. 

Australia, too, is as Canada, with a rather more 
racial conception of citizenship, but without any great 
historical civic religion. If South Africans are to 
become one united people, which the recent Cape 
elections seem to foreshadow ; moreover, if all South 
Africans are to draw their living inspiration from 
memories of Dutch and English colonial valorous 
deeds in the past ; if these memories are to wax into 
the dominant religious passion of an all -African 
existence, then Lord Kitchener's prophecy may 
become true, that South Africa is to become a 
* second United States.' 

The United States then, compared with the other 
nations of history, is rightly defined as a freely welded 
together 'civic theocracy.' It is a great democratic 
union of half a hundred races, made one not in any 
ties of blood-relationship, but in the common civic 
faith that certain principles, like civic freedom, 
equality, and brotherhood are as immutable as the 
Eternal One, and that if these are acted upon they 
covenant a people with its safety, security, unity, 
prosperity, endurance. The origin of these inde- 
pendent republican conceptions in the structure of 
the United States is found in the moral freedom of 



90 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

the ideal theocracy of Hebrew seers, preserved by 
Christianity in the Bible, and emphasised by the 
Puritan founders of New England. To this is added 
the more humane Christian civism inherent in the 
New Testament. 

In the fact that both Thomas Paine and Ingersoll 
believed that fraternity, equality, liberty were eternal 
and eternally life-giving principles, they were equally 
hierophants of American civic religion and of the 
* virtual theocracy,' as much as Governor Bradford, 
as Theodore Parker, Cuyler, Abraham Lincoln, and 
Dr. Lyman Abbott. All American seers have taught 
the transcendent worth of each individual human being 
in an assurance which constitutes a religious faith. 

This civic faith in human individuality arose from 
the Puritan interpretation of Christianity. Without 
any necessary allusion to Christianity this trust in 
the individual man is as the first article of the 
supreme democratic religious faith which makes 
America a nation. 

The second article of this democratic * Apostles' 
Creed ' of America is the faith in human fraternity. 
In their fraternity of a common national sentiment, 
^ Americanised ' Americans — say of the Mississippi 
Plains — are the most united people in the world. 
Yet they are the most disunited in that tie of blood- 
relationship which, for instance, Prussia is now 
acting upon against the Poles. 



AMERICAN NATIONALISM 91 

The effect of this recognition of fraternity is that 
the United States is truly a 'block' recognition of 
the natural civic fraternity of mankind. The German 
American, that is, and the French American, must 
fraternise while they are abiding by their rights and 
duties of citizens of the Republic. But America is 
no apostle of any such ideal of the community of 
races outside its boundaries. 

This fraternal comradeship of humanity then is 
necessarily limited by the necessities and limitations 
of the necessarily institutional life of America. To 
play an AnarchasisClootz, or ' citizen of all the world,' 
would, of course, be mere buffoonery. America is 
satisfied to welcome within its portals the members 
of the half a hundred races and nationalities who 
have any chance of amalgamating with American life. 

The momentum of American nationalism was also 
aided in the beginning by the reaction against British 
monarchical government. It was necessary, institu- 
tionally, to contrapoise the monarchy in a republican 
government scientifically equipped to meet the be- 
while enemy in every expression of its activity at the 
gates. The confronting new nation must be impelled 
with a people's backing at every point. The king's 
authority in war, by land and sea, can be matched by 
the president, as commander-in-chief of the forces, 
voted for by the majority of all the commonwealth. 

In time of peace the monarchical ambassador is 



92 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

matched by the plenipotentiary like Franklin. A 
counter-parliament — Congress — is ordained to legis- 
late for the sustenance of individual freedom, and 
the protection of the new nationality based on the 
common comradeship of all the races. 

The immobility which keeps a monarchy one and 
the same for a thousand years was to be matched 
in an immutable constitution filled with limitations, 
checks, prohibitions, guarantees of all the freedoms, 
rights, independencies of all the States and of each 
citizen. 

By the working of this same constitution, judges 
were to be created all round the country to shave off 
all excrescences of legislature in Congress, or in the 
local parliaments, which might conflict with human 
rights. These constitutional laws which Congress 
can only alter by a superhuman effort, are the per- 
manent lie or direction of American nation-build- 
ing. America could not, without its Constitution, 
have grown from a coast-line to fill a continent. 
For between the revolutionary War of Independ- 
ence and the national acceptance of the institutional 
freedom of the Constitution there was the blackest 
period of anarchy that ever existed in the western 
world, and expansion requires institutional union, if 
it is not to be a mere migration away. 

Every State had been in mortal feud against every 
other of the thirteen States. They were head over 



AMERICAN NATIONALISM 93 

ears in scuffling over coinage, excise, customs. 
Every prerogative of sovereignty and authority was 
in the condition of pandemonium. 

At a * constitutive assembly ' instigated by James 
Madison, after fierce debating in the meeting-place 
at Annapolis, Maryland, the Commissioners for the 
respective States, seeing that all were threatened 
with national annihilation, agreed upon a union on 
the strength of several great compromises. 

The gallant, fiery South would work with the 
calculating, hustling North, if the North left State 
Sovereignty in abeyance. The Little Brother States, 
like Delaware and Rhode Island, would work with 
the Big Brother States if they both could vote with 
equal weight in the nation's Senate. No one should 
impertinently tariff the goods consigned for sale by 
the merchants of a brother State. Big and little 
brothers should look after the affairs of their own 
households, and no one from the outside should peep 
over the wall as to any domestic relationships. 

Free as air in his own affairs, every local patriot 
should be a comrade of 'All America.' The ques- 
tions of the foreigner, of the Open Door between all 
States, the coinage, the Constitution, were also in the 
compromise. 

Under the ' Shepherd-Constitution' of America, 
the ' block ' of human fraternity began to expand itself 
from a sea-board series of settlements throughout a 



94 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

continent. Each original settlement which opened 
towards the backwoods had once claimed rights to 
an indefinite extension of its Hinterland due west. 
These ever-westering rods of land, in time, broke off 
their ends into new brother States, which were allowed 
to come into official being on the condition of their 
accepting the initial compact by which America was 
founded. 

Then Jefferson bought the incalculable wealth of 
the Greater Louisiana — a block of the world-claims of 
defunct Spain temporarily taken over by the French 
broker-in-chief, Napoleon, for sale to the United 
States. 

But union was not yet irreversible. The South 
was gathering momentum towards State-rights and 
the paternalistic slave-structure of society. Its pro- 
tagonists took Texas and raced towards the Pacific to 
keep the territory below the Mason and Dixon Line, 
and if possible to win much else besides, for slave 
labour. New Englanders made counter-colonisations, 
singing these words : 

We cross the prairie, as of old 

The Pilgrims crossed the sea, 
To make the west, as they the east. 

The Homestead of the free. 

Then the crucial crash came off. The South 
rebelled to test the question, ^ Is the desire for 
Union a reality or is it Puritanic *' make-believe"?' 



AMERICAN NATIONALISM 95 

The logic of the ensuing Civil War taught that 
whatever the appearance may have been, America 
in the main meant union in a passion as strong as 
death, and as cruel in jealousy as the accompanying 
soldier's grave. 

These experimental arguments of military carnage 
proved that the Republican Ideal of an institutional 
union between races and States in a common com- 
monwealth was neither farce nor bombast, but a 
nation-founding reality, to prove itself permanent 
in history. The war in a sense yielded the verdict 
for a possible world-wide institutional comradeship of 
man. There is not a survivor. North or South, to- 
day, who does not believe that the War's achievement 
of the present heart and soul union of America was 
worth the crucial battlefields. 

The result of the Civil War was the scientific com- 
pletement of the United States area with the enhanced 
comradeship the war had ringed together. Economic 
union was now won by railways, fed by land grants. 
The nation predisposed its future form in geometric 
counties, precincts, townships, and territories or 
states. Settlers had free farms of quarter sections on 
the condition of occupying ownership, provided they 
reserved land in every township for a school. 

In a few years trans-continental America was com- 
mercially, industrially, economically one, by reason 
of its scientific transportation system. It soon became 



96 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

one farm, one market, a concerted factory, a common 
statehood, a common township. Cities fell into order 
around its industries, and States fell into order 
around its cities. A * territory ' ruled hitherto from 
Washington could become a State whenever it ac- 
cepted the pastoral protective care of the ' shepherd- 
constitution. ' States like Nebraska so willingly did so, 
that they incorporated provisions of the Federal Con- 
stitution within their own State Constitution. To-day 
Federal Authority, having crossed the seas in Hawaii, 
Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, has grown to be 
Imperial too. 

The individual States have mimicked Uncle Sam in 
petty Representatives, petty Senators, and a petty 
Governor of the State. A governor, however, is so 
great a man that when the reformer, Governor La 
Follette, was elected United States Senator for Wis- 
consin, he hesitated for a long time as to which was 
the more responsible position to retain. 

When the period of continental expansion was 
geometrically filled in, and nothing free remained for 
new settlers, the roll of immigrants still steadily 
advanced towards and beyond the million a year 
mark. Hitherto the outlet for new growth had recti- 
fied errors in the process of the growth itself. The 
dark following of Poverty which dogged the steps of 
Progress only had to go to the free lands upon the 
boundary and it might commute itself into wealth. 



AMERICAN NATIONALISM 97 

But the third great crisis of America was entered 
upon the moment the closing in of the free places 
made it necessary to think seriously of the methodisa- 
tion of the great intaking and expansion of the last 
sixty years. 

Other crises had been in the construction of a 
Constitution in which Washington was the chief 
figure, and the welding of America into sense and 
motor unity in the Civil War ushered in by Lincoln. 

The crisis of America now on was inevitable from 
the uncriticised filling up of Mississippi plains with 
farms and cities, and the packing of the Cordilleras 
with new States. 

The pioneer of the settlement of this third, the 
social, crisis, seems to be President Roosevelt. The 
task before him has been the scientific reining of 
Wealth in the interests of the Commonwealth. In 
an analogous sense we may call a nation's infinite 
power of recuperation in accord with its own past its 
^ civic ' religion. ' Religion, ' in this civic sense, being 
the ' science of crises ' that a President Roosevelt, or 
any one, must use, is the motive energy to be evoked. 
Civic religion, analogously to all other religion, is 
the scrutinising, examining, sorrowing, repenting, 
absolving, saving, sustaining, regenerating, reani- 
mating power of a nation. A living race may be 
defined as an organisation for resisting the crises of 
life. No animal race even can persist without its 

G 



98 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

crisis-resisting reserve of power, which is in a sense 
its cosmic 'religion.' Rome, as has been shown, 
perished because it had lost its civic religion. No 
people endowed with an indestructible civic religion 
can ever die. Compare the fate of the all-conquering 
Romans with that of the eternally beaten but eternally 
invincible Jews. 

America then had expanded, but had left some 
millions of poor men in the train of its unfathomed 
wealth. The civic religion of America is likely now 
to prove itself, as the nation's power of scientifically 
emerging from a state of anarchic extremes of 
wealth and poverty into a more fraternal consoli- 
darisation between every prince-fortuned and pauper- 
fortuned citizen of the American comradeship. 

They who know to the full the story of corrup- 
tions in city government, and in connection with the 
anarchic, irresponsible, Satanic influence of a certain 
type of de-nationalised plutocrats, if they do not 
forget those foundation realities which have made 
America what it is, cannot but believe that the pre- 
sent evils of social inequality will prove but the occa- 
sion of a national advance towards a more perfect 
economic union of all the units of American social 
life, than has ever hitherto existed. 

A further consideration of this third great crisis 
of the nation's life is reserved especially for the 
chapter on 'Social Conversion.' 



CENTENNIAL STATE OF COLORADO 99 



CHAPTER VI 

THE CENTENNIAL STATE OF COLORADO 

Colorado, a model of all the freedoms of humanity, 
is called the Centennial State, because it entered into 
its statehood exactly one hundred years after the First 
Day of Independence. The Centennial State stands, 
like the Angel of the Apocalypse, half on the high 
ground of the mountains, and half on the flat land- 
bed of the ancient seas. Colorado is of about the 
same area as Great Britain, and is graced with blue 
sky and sunshine for about three hundred and twenty 
days in the year. 

I have seen the rounded stones left by the ancient 
waters at the foot of the first huge, treeless, bar of 
rock that cuts the mountains from the level plains. 
For a few weeks in the spring some spots of this 
giant barrier are bespangled with anemones and 
many another flower, but no grass shows between 
the rock-eaves. Before one reaches the mountain 
bar itself, there are great creakings, rumples, ^ hog- 
backs,' and 'verdant mountains ' with their delicate 
ice-coloured flower, the * evening primrose,' on the 



loo THE LAND OF PROMISE 

approaching plain. These are the crumplings of 
the later world-covering blanket of the sedimentary- 
strata from the moment of the portentous crack that 
caused the birth of the nine thousand mile long 
Cordillera mountain range. Then the sea-beds gave 
up the dead that were in them, and the Tertiary- 
layers, moving as fluid before such cosmic forces, 
were lifted and turned as though they had been 
waves of the sea. 

But the sea simile in other ways also is true to life. 
One enters the dried port in the ancient coast, called 
Morrison. The latest light sandstone being harder 
than the lower sediment, it is lifted like a wave's 
back (called technically a hog's back, from its upper- 
most serrations), and the inner and softer sand-side 
is scooped away like a wave which is rushing over 
the Cyclopean shore. 

Within the high enclosure, wherein real sea-waves 
once flowed besides these world -age memorials 
carved in the giant stone, and along the steep moun- 
tain shore, one can walk over, in thirty paces, not 
less than thirty beautifully coloured sedimentary rock 
cleavages. These are mauve, red, white, green, 
brown and grey. The red and white rocks are cut 
away fantastically by the weather action, jutting 
out in vertical red and white shapes, that have 
given their enclosures the names of the Garden of 
the Angels at Morrison, and the Garden of the Gods, 



CENTENNIAL STATE OF COLORADO loi 

at more famous Manitou. These gardens end where 
the old fire-molten rock ascends in its first great 
step towards the Front Range, twenty miles behind. 
There is no introit to the scena of the mountain 
ritual except by way of the rock-slits, gorges, 
canyons, sawn out of the rock - mass by ancient 
niagaras of ice. 

Going up a canyon in the dusk of the evening, the 
fantastic jagged rocks seem to peer on the intruder- 
acolyte, like portentous hawks or mountainous owls. 
Long after the coming of darkness in the steep 
valley, the clouds above are lit up in the darken- 
ing sky, and looking now just like luminous Chinese 
lanterns hanging above, they shower down a gentle 
light upon the wayfarer in the depths below. 

After a spiralling, corkscrewing journey in a ten- 
mile canyon, the altar-seeker enters the zone of the 
pitch-pines and cedars, ever dark, and ever green, 
brightened by the fir-trees and silver spruces of the 
summer months. Rocks of reddish granite ever and 
everyway burst through, and the plant-covering of 
their approaches turns to burning crimson in the 
fall of the year. The densely wooded mountains now 
begin to stand as big sentinels in front. Between 
them, here and there, are glimpses of the high altar 
of the snow-peaks, above and beyond and behind the 
wooded heights. 

The forest extends along the Front Range slopes 



I02 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

for at least twenty-five leagues, and it is three leagues 
wide, making a great dark band between the snow 
peaks and the five miles of mountainous desolation 
on the first stage of the ascent. 

Beyond the Front Range are the four, flat, high- 
levelled parks of Colorado, on the sites of ancient 
freshwater lakes. They are all noted for game ; and 
the San Luis park, the most southerly, is the home 
of the bronchos. 

Colorado is all a State of vistas. It has steps and 
stages fit for Titans ; bands of coloured rock, the top 
rim of the dark forest cloak of the mountains ; ending 
abruptly at the grand level timber-line of 11,500 
feet. There is a uniformity in its trees, its parks, 
its canyons, its bands of rocks, its rows of 14,000 
feet high summits, its sanded beds of rivers, its 
plains, and the ashen blue of its buffalo grass in 
the spring. 

Irrigation has now made the valleys and the whole 
of the land between Denver and the mountains an 
immensely prosperous producing centre. Yet all the 
streets of Denver open upon the sight of mountains, 
or else upon the tawny desert close at hand, on the 
opposite side, watching the city in perennial siege. 

The State of Colorado then is either a rich garden, 
a wild forest, a barren panorama of a quadrillion tons 
of rock, or a desert flushed in spring with buffalo 
grass. 



CENTENNIAL STATE OF COLORADO 103 

In this picturesque universe the capital city lies 
splendidly upon two levels of ground, between the 
great range and the desert. 

On the top of the higher level, facing mountain- 
wards, over grass frontings and a spacious square 
stands the stately white-domed Capitol of Colorado. 

Behind the Capitol are the double avenues built 
up with well -spaced stone houses of the wealthy 
inhabitants set in nightly-washed plots of grass. 
Facing the Capitol below the hill is the Brown 
Palace Hotel, where cowboys, prospectors, railroad 
magnates and French counts * after cattle,' real estate 
speculators and city bosses fraternise over sales, ven- 
tures, flotations, capitalisations, and mining enter- 
prises. Here the once broken carpenter, the late 
Mr. Henry Stratton, would resort. He it was who, 
in trailing through the desolate Cripple Creek region, 
had struck upon the gem mine of Colorado, and here 
he used to talk as sententiously as a Grand Duke of 
Russia about the destinies of the Centennial State. 

To the right stood the worthy Denver Cathedral, 
unhappily destroyed by fire, in spite of seven fire 
engines in their organ-like hum fighting through the 
livelong night, in trying to save it. The building is 
being replaced by a much vaster edifice upon the hill. 

Between the square and the station to the west are 
the great business blocks of the city. Beyond the 
business section the so-called * red light ' area holds 



I04 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

its influxes of the men who flock in to live by their 
wits whenever the city government chances to slacken 
the reins of power. 

Colorado has striven in some respects to be the 
model State of America. Getting its constitution one 
hundred years after America declared its freedom, it 
soon allowed absolute equality in politics between 
men and women. There are two influential women's 
political clubs, the Republican and the Democratic. 
From out of these clubs the ladies once sent a delega- 
tion to study the governments of the cities of the 
world in order to give Denver a perfect civic charter. 
There was never to be ' graft ' in the city again. 
Policemen were to rise solely by civil service merits, 
and to have pensions which would make it unworth 
their while to accept payment for the non-enforcement 
of law. By stuffed ballot boxes, the *Big Mitt' made 
havoc of their idealism at the referendum. Slightly 
altered, the charter was, however, soon afterwards 
passed. Later the six judges of the Supreme Court, 
who were not afraid to dismiss the claimant governors 
of the State from office, pounced on the evil election 
judges, and sent them to jail without the possibility 
of appeal, and fined them each a good round sum. 

The chief of the police was a little figure who used 
to drive around with expedition in a buggy like a 
spider. He went around the city quick enough to 
be more than a match, in moral effect, to Chief 



CENTENNIAL STATE OF COLORADO 105 

Croker in his red dragon of a record-breaking motor, 
who, unhampered by speed regulations, appeared 
on every scene of any trouble in Greater New York 
at a few moments' notice. 

I recall the occasion when a Denver suburb, nest- 
ling with retreats of harried gamblers, was included 
within the city precincts. The chief of police 
suddenly appeared on the scene the very next day 
and brought all their little gambols to a termination. 

None the less Denver, in spite of its charters, 
rights, city government. State government, federal 
judges, women's franchise, children's court, and every 
conceivable model institution, including its famed 
high schools and two universities, is as much within 
the bruit of the Armageddon of the third crisis of 
America as are its sister cities in other States. 

When the ' pool-room ' gambling dens were sup- 
posed to be rigidly supressed in Denver, the hawk- 
attorney of New York City, Mr. William Travers 
Jerome, whilst visiting Denver, chanced to walk up 
17th Street. He afterwards chaffed the city officials 
who were telling him that Denver was a ^ close ' 
town, by saying that he had counted eighteen pool- 
rooms open on the one street he had passed along. 

In all good-humour, one must keep an eye on the 
subtlety in which society must deal with the over- 
exciting occupations of some of its members. I tried 
to probe the problem as well as I could. In the first 



io6 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

place the evils of an American city may not be a 
quarter what they are in certain much-vaunted pro- 
gressive cities elsewhere ; but the evils are truly 
sensational and alarming because there are never 
such deep social cleavages for them to break through 
as there are in Europe. Men who would simply be 
kept at arm's-length as of the criminal classes in 
other countries are wont to study respectability in 
America, and invest in the apings of virtue for a 
definite hope of ill-gotten dividends. These men 
may invade the innermost sanctums of rulership — 
hidden fiends under the garb of angels of light. 
But aliens from the true American life they never 
cease to be. 

The average American is conscious of the New 
Jerusalem element boxed into the laws of his nation 
and state and city. Keen in the life-sport of business, 
an optimist about his country, he is not wont to be 
roused to violent energy against the mischiefs of the 
day. Suppose that twenty professional gamblers get 
to Denver from any part of the world. They are 
violently determined upon their campaign and fight 
like Trojans and lynxes in politics as fiercely as the 
ancient freebooters, or buccaneers on the high seas, 
and for spoils quite as great. There is no great 
counter-animus in the benevolent mass of citizens 
which can in the least be compared with the bravery 
of these desperadoes for hell. Thus the rich State of 



CENTENNIAL STATE OF COLORADO 107 

Missouri was, a few years ago, utterly without a fight- 
ing crank on God's side, except the one man, Attorney 
Folk. The impassioned plunderers rushed the State, 
controlled the government, and shared the spoils. 
The people had no impetus to war against them. 
The one heaven - born sergeant. Attorney Folk, 
sounded the bugle, and taunted the comfortable 
optimistic citizens of the State to take up arms. In 
their new fighting fury, the now drilled citizens, 
metaphorically speaking, rushed the outworks of the 
enemy in their midst who had captured the govern- 
ment, and locked the intruders in the State jail. 

I heard President Roosevelt, who knows more than 
most men how a State can only hold its own by aid 
of a battle-fury equal to the violent passions of its 
* grafters,' address thirty thousand men, from the 
steps of the Denver Capitol, on the subject of the 
fighting virtues which make a State a State. The 
Denver people, to whom I spoke, thought this in- 
citement to battle-fury rather a false alarm. 

Events, however, proved that the President knew 
what he was about, for a little later on I was present 
in a house where the son of my hostess was given a 
telegram from the State officials. In five minutes he 
was off for rifle and equipment to join the State 
militia in what proved the beginning of a serious 
civil war. Entire America is learning the lesson 
that idealists' constitutions, charters, and model laws 



io8 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

are little better in themselves than the pious feelings 
of Utopians, without a drilled and martial manning 
of the State's defences by fighting-men. The warrior 
citizens must be men who yield as many inches to 
the ' grafter ' as they would wish to yield as soldiers 
on the battle-field against the more obvious but less 
dangerous enemies of the fatherland. 

It is precisely in the ordering and organising of 
civic militancy in a permanent form in which the 
essentiality of American religion consists. Those 
greatest idealists of the world, the Pilgrim Fathers, 
were forerunners in the constructive soul-unity of the 
American commonwealth. With an element of hell- 
fire rancour their Puritan successors (though not the 
gentler Pilgrims at the Plymouth Settlement) once 
controlled Massachusetts after their hearts' desire. 
Their violent, but now more practical, democratic 
idealism at the time of the Rebellion clashed with 
the unresponsive King George iii. The statesmen- 
conservatives of New America like Washington and 
other Virginians, applied in a national sense what 
the New Englanders had done in a civic sense in 
their respective townships. 

Puritanism, grown humane, as the previous chapter 
said, under Channing and Theodore Parker, was 
obliged in the slave agitation to assume the uncom- 
promising militancy which was crowned at Gettys- 
burg. It is this latent humane militarism which is 



CENTENNIAL STATE OF COLORADO 109 

the one security that America will remain an idealist 
nation, rather than a purely materialist aggregation 
of commercialists. This fighting-culture has spread 
in a great band on the parallel from, say, Salem and 
Portland, in New England, to the Salem and Port- 
land founded by New Englanders in the Pacific 
States, itself a striking confirmation of the scientific 
theory that the races of men spread most readily in 
isothermic zones, taking their moral culture with 

them. 

The nursing centres of this fighting culture are the 
communions of the Congregationalists, Methodists, 
Baptists, and Presbyterians of a State like Colorado, 
together with the Anglo-American Church, wherever 
these have managed to stamp this culture on their 
environment. When Attorney Jerome wishes for 
some stiff but necessary legislation for the benefit 
of easy-going, cosmopolitan New York City, he cam- 
paigns for it among the uncompromising Methodist 
farmers up in New York State. They are wont to 
support him on every occasion with imperative re- 
quests upon their representatives at Albany. A State 
like Kansas owes all of its too adventurous idealistic 
legislation to the migration of the Puritans in the 
'fifties. In Nebraska the Congregationalists, Metho- 
dists, and Baptists formed a ring of militancy en- 
gaged in deadly conflict against the saloon element. 
In Denver this religiously originating fighting efii- 



no THE LAND OF PROMISE 

ciency was only just replacing the earlier optimism 
which rested on its oars over the known democratic 
idealism embedded in its statutes. 

In San Francisco, where the cranks are abhorred, 
there has never been any ethical militancy against 
impassioned * grafters ' except the panic-ardour of 
Vigilance Committees. Some of the old fire was 
kindled there quite recently when two hundred men 
threatened to impale the judge if he had allowed the 
arch-hero of graftsmen, Abraham Rueff, to become 
the State Attorney, and thus block every possible 
prosecution of evildoers. 

America then must remain in a state of siege as to 
civic integrity for many a year to come. Not only 
do a million and more foreigners arrive every year 
with little knowledge or experience of the self- 
restraints required of free men, but in an entirely new 
republic the organisation of the militant executive of 
justice is necessarily slow to arrive. In the Middle 
Ages, in England, the king went on circuit and was 
a death-dealer to the impious. In modern Europe 
and in Canada there is the delegation of the terror 
of sovereignty with its backing of the momentum of 
centuries. In the United States it was supposed that 
model constitutions and laws would take the place 
of the conscience-supported striking force of the 
executive. Such a happy issue has never occurred 
in any country whatever. President Roosevelt is 



CENTENNIAL STATE OF COLORADO in 

perhaps the first American to recognise that a nation 
newly constituted can never be free from corruption 
without the long-developed national and civic con- 
science which creates a virtual executive High Con- 
stable, to break the power of evildoers in any of those 
cases in which protection is claimed by manipulating 
the country's laws and constitutional guarantees. He 
has thus encouraged the growth of an imperial or 
inter-State conscience in complement to the policy of 
foreign expansion which he inherited from McKinley. 

In a democratic country the support of the popula- 
tion is essential before any such national executive 
power can move in civic affairs. The recent San 
Franciscan clearance was really, it is said, effected 
by two men released temporarily from duties under 
the executive in Washington. Ordinarily speaking, 
these federal officers would have been ejected from 
the sovereign State of California as interlopers. Now 
it is beginning to be seen that an institution of a 
national civic executive to ensure protection within 
America to every person in every State is what all 
the religious and ethical groups of citizens must join 
in to bring to pass. 

Colorado, too, has to face all these tasks of citizen- 
ship, because, socially, politically, and economically, 
it is an epitome of all America. A band of desert 
and arid territory separates it from the wealthy 
mid-Western States. Hundreds of miles of moun- 



112 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

tains and deserts separate it from the Pacific States. 
The mesa, the forests, the parks, the mountains, the 
climate, draw visitors to Colorado from other States, 
for pleasure, for sport, for summer residence against 
the heat, for winter refuge against the blizzards that 
sweep the plains. 

The long distance from manufacturing centres 
with correspondingly heavy freightage rates have 
encouraged local industries. The smelters account 
for the mountain ores. The local United States 
mint receives the purified silver and gold. The 
great Fuel and Iron Company of Pueblo supplies 
steel rails for railways which, to the number of about 
twenty, converge in Colorado from the east or radiate 
from its centres to the north, south, and west. 

The fortune-building of the State was first effected 
through the rich discoveries of silver in the middle 
of the last century in the California Gulch of Lead- 
ville and at Silver Plume. Gold was then discovered 
in a few ^ placers ' about Clear Creek, and then in 
large quantities though in low grade ore in the 
amphitheatre of fissure veins in little Gilpin County. 
Improved smelting methods were introduced from 
Swansea, South Wales. These by constant improve- 
ment have led to a steady output of paying sulphide 
ores till the present day. 

Then the sensational strike of surface and deep- 
mine gold was made at Cripple Creek in the 'nineties ; 



CENTENNIAL STATE OF COLORADO 113 

and extensive gold and silver fields have been opened 
in the Telluride and San Juan districts to the south- 
west. 

There followed a great increase in agriculture by- 
aid of scientific irrigation. At the present date the 
value of the crops reaches about $40,000,000 and has 
probably overtopped the entire mining output of the 
State. 

The great ranching districts are to the east and 
south beyond the reach of irrigation from the Ark- 
ansas, and northwards near the River Platte, and 
westwards, are the sheep-raising areas. 

Adventurous undergraduates from all the Eastern 
Colleges flock into the wild mesa region of the south- 
west. The fashionable exercise of the men and 
women undergraduates is the chase and capture and 
training of the wild horses, called bronchos, which 
graze about the Uncompahgre slopes, the Grand 
Mesa, or the highlands of the San Luis Park. 

The game of Routt county to the extreme north- 
west draws the sportsmen ; and a few venture into 
the difficult rocky fastnesses above the Royal Gorge, 
where the only trees are stumpy piiions and dwarf 
cedars, in pursuit of the 'mountain lion.' 

I spent a winter in the very heart of the Rockies 
at Buena Vista, at the foot of the Collegiate Peaks of 
Princeton, Yale, and Harvard, on the main road to 
Leadville, near the sources of the Arkansas, 

H 



114 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

The site lay on the glacier-scarred bed of an 
ancient lake, between two mountain ranges, narrow- 
ing to the north, but opening out at the ' Fair View * 
(Buena Vista) towards the south. In this direction 
lay the Sangre de Cristo mountains, thirty miles 
away. I could see the snow-storms pouring over the 
distant summits and curling inwards like the breakers 
in some final secular confusion of the sea. But every 
evening the western sun would tinge the snows of 
the mountain into the fairest of crimsons. This, I 
thought, may have suggested to the pictorial m.inds 
of the Spaniards who first were there the names of 
Buena Vista (Fair View), and Sangre de Cristo 
(the Blood of Christ). It seems as a memorial, to a 
beholder, of the story of the Atoning Love of Christ. 
There was also to the north the Mountain of the 
Holy Cross, with its great crossed snow streak, the 
tip reaching to the height of 14,000 feet in the air, 
recalling the legend of the reappearance of the Cross 
in the sky on the Day of Doom. 

The gem of Colorado sites is Evergreen, above the 
canyon which opens at Morrison on the Bear Creek. 
Evergreen is on a rocky bend of the creek, amid the 
evergreen pines and cedars, and contains the stores 
which supply their needs to the lumbermen of the 
higher mountain regions. As you approach by the 
stage from the east, there is a precious Episcopalian 
chapel noted in all Colorado for its Catholic rites. 



CENTENNIAL STATE OF COLORADO 115 

Above the chapel is Mount Independence, 8000 feet, 
with timber untouched, and many a beautiful glade 
entering its rugged slopes. The road by the creek 
bends to the left, and then goes westwards, having 
rounded an enormous rock. Here are the few stores 
with a dense pine wood on the slopes across the 
stream. 

Another road bends to the right on crossing the 
stream, immediately on leaving the chapel. Pro- 
ceeding a quarter of a mile one reaches Camp Neosho, 
occupied by the Douglas family. Mr. Douglas, the 
hospitable owner and also rector, is well known in 
Oxford and among many cultured circles of England 
and America. 

The camp, which is usually occupied in summer, is 
built of logs with a large rustic open hall, decorated 
with Indian rugs and pottery. There are coloured 
Indian shields, one of which shows a glorified picture 
of the fight with General Custer's force. 

The fireplace reminds one of baronial days. There 
is a library in a log-built octagon room adjacent, 
rich with all the choicest poetry of England and 
America. There are twelve tents amid the trees 
surrounding the log- house, for the entertainment 
of friends and relatives of the family. Around it 
is a park-land sloping down within view of Mount 
Independence. A few steps behind the opening in 
the tree-lands one can see the snowy range of the 



ii6 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

central watershed of America, though, as I was to 
experience, the journey thither requires several days 
set apart to walking and climbing. 

In August, one year, whilst staying at this camp 
at Evergreen, I prepared to climb the head peak of 
the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. Laden 
heavily in view of any compulsory sleeping out 
on the wilds, I started one morning and walked 
about twenty miles through the mountain forest. I 
mounted over two watersheds leading through the 
great wooded heights of the ' Chief ' and the * Squaw.' 
By evening I got down into the Clear Creek Valley, 
by the delightful waters of Idaho Springs. The 
whole way thither I met only one human being, an 
aged and kindly rancheman, who was looking for a 
team of horses he had turned loose in the open part 
of the forest. On asking me about my destination, 
I replied, ^ Torrey's Peak.' 'Gee whiz! You'll 
never make it, sir,' he said. Then we sat down on 
a log, and he told me a long story about the miners 
of Silver Plume, and of Georgetown ; how, when 
the Gold Standard was set up in 1893, most of the 
silver-mines closed, and the miners were all in straits. 
He said they were earning from $2.50 to $3.00 a day, 
but many of them had to spend so much that they 
could not pay their railway fares to other places after 
the slump. This state of things with the mines has 
been remedied since, by a more scientific manner of 



CENTENNIAL STATE OF COLORADO 117 

treating sulphides in which gold is found in the ratio 
of from $2.00 to $3.00 or more per ton of ore. 

The old man now dwelt forlornly on the state of 
religion in the Clear Creek Valley. He thought 
that all Christian denominations were helpless in 
their attempts to reach the miners. But there was 
one exception, the ^Scientists.' I gathered that he 
was an independent Christian Scientist, an ex-Baptist, 
who thought nevertheless that even the Scientists 
were not perfect in their manifestation of Christ. He 
added that he knew that Christ was ^ coming again,' 
and on my asking when, he replied, ' In the year 
1946.' I told him in good-humour, that if we were 
to have Christ, I did not see why we should have to 
wait as long as that. But he was perfectly contented 
with the thought ; and his convictions were unalter- 
able. He said that nothing else would reinvigorate 
the Christian world but Christ. 

It is impossible to proceed far in America without 
accosting religious realism of this type. On the last 
night of the old century, a whole congregation of 
worshippers in Chicago had stayed up the whole 
night, watching, in the firm conviction that Christ 
was coming out of the skies that very night ; and a 
similar incident was reported from the Pacific coast. 
It was probable that the year 1946, mentioned by 
the old man, was a date postponed from the time of 
some previous futile watching at the close of the 



ii8 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

lately ended century. These * waitings on the Lord ' 
are the poor beginnings on the part of a New 
World to get away from the uninterpretable jargon 
of Greek and Calvinistic dogmas into a living, 
human possession, which would give them back the 
Bible, and incidentally ^justify the ways of God 
to men.' 

Parting from the old rancheman, I took the narrow- 
gauge, oil-driven, smokeless train that winds its way, 
at the bottom of a gorge three thousand feet deep, up 
to Silver Plume. This is a mining camp, situated in 
a valley packed between precipitous mountain slopes. 
From various levels of the mountain walls tunnels 
run inwards to intercept the fissure veins of precious 
metal in the inner treasury. Here is the terminus 
of the narrow-gauge line ; and a short distance 
beyond is the continental watershed which is crossed 
by passes, for use in summer, varying from i i,ooo feet 
to the Argentine Pass of 13,000 feet in height. 

My destination was now twelve miles away, namely 
Torrey's Peak, the head of the Front Range, if we 
except Gray's Peak, adjoining, named after Dr. Asa 
Gray, which, though about a hundred feet higher, is 
in reality only a huge mound of loose stones in the 
midst of steep mountains. 

Starting next morning with all my pack, but un- 
accompanied, I traced Clear Creek up towards its 
sources, and I soon entered the replica of an Alpine 



CENTENNIAL STATE OF COLORADO 119 

valley velveted with trees. In its hollow the copious 
waters of the stream ran along in crystalline clear- 
ness, as much deserving their name here as they 
misdeserved it below the mining camp. I have 
never seen so fair and untainted a stream. There is 
neither moss nor one speck of sediment in all its bed, 
and the stones which pave its way are of a light 
green-coloured granite, which, under the waters, 
looks like emerald. Four miles up, I veered to the 
left, and saw the monstrous horn of the mountain- 
head, inaccessible here for an amateur, in front. I 
followed a mining trail which doubled round to the 
left again, leading to the ^ Last Mine,' situated where 
the timber-line runs into a sharp edge with the 
ascending trail. It was now twelve o'clock noon ; 
and I was 11,500 feet above the sea. 

I next entered into the semicircle of an amphi- 
theatre of inaccessible rocks, rising almost verti- 
cally above the timber-line. With this amphitheatre 
sweeping round on my left like the back of a crouch- 
ing monster, I mounted slowly upwards towards the 
huge buffalo hump of Gray's Peak. The sleeping 
monster terminated in the sharp-set precipitous head, 
Torrey's Peak, again in front of me slightly to the 
right. The mountain panorama was now above the 
trees of the world. But along the course of a torrent 
which often buried itself, there was luxuriant low 
shrubbery, and above, on either side, a blanket of 



I20 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

thick grass. Fortunately there was little snow that 
year. Continuing to ascend, I crept along the side of 
a steep bank of loose sharp-cut stones till I reached 
a streamlet near the neck which joins the two peaks 
together. I found a stray bit of wood here, and made 
cocoa over a tiny fire. At this spot I left my bag, 
and then made a dash for the summit. I crossed a 
bank of snow by the edge of a precipice 2000 feet 
deep, and reached the top of the neck of land on 
which, at an elevation of nearly 14,000 feet, I 
gathered beautiful blue and yellow gentians. The 
peak was a pyramid to the right about four hundred 
feet above. Summoning all strength I reached the 
summit at 2.15 p.m., with a sense of triumph at 
having reached the coveted point of elevation, 14,340 
feet above the level of the sea. The sky above was 
cloudless blue, and below me lay the Western States 
of America, in one of the grandest expanses of scenery 
in the world. The great range unwound itself to the 
north ending in the giant bastions of Long's Peak, 
some way beyond which the Medicine Bow Range 
veered round north-westwards into Wyoming. West- 
wards chain after chain of mountain ranges arose like 
waves in a huge and angry sea. The last of these 
waves in sight was Uintah, in far-away Utah, two 
hundred miles from where I stood. Miles beyond 
Uintah was the City of the Saints, in a land whose 
features so strangely conformed to those of the Holy 



CENTENNIAL STATE OF COLORADO 121 

Land. I knew that these great rocky waves suc- 
ceeded one another also to the Nevadas, nine 
hundred miles away ; that beyond these again were 
the Contra Costas on the margin of the western 
ocean. More than a hundred miles south-west rose 
up the rugged clusters of the vein -streaked San 
Juan, the roughest of all the Rockies, and some of the 
most metalliferous. Nearer, in the same direction, 
were the twelve 14,000 feet high peaks of the Sawatch. 
In the south-east a forest fire was raging ; the smoke 
obscured the view of the mountains, or I might have 
had glimpses of the ugly monster near Colorado 
Springs called Pike's Peak. 

More wonderful than this array of mountains was 
the ocean-like plain which I could see eastwards over 
the tops of forty miles of mountains which were in be- 
tween. It seemed as immeasurable, as flat, and as 
level and as expanded as the ocean itself. There 
was enough smoke over Denver, sixty miles away, to 
prevent my seeing the city, but beyond Denver all 
was clear eastwards, north-east, and south-east to the 
horizon, perhaps one hundred and eighty miles away. 
The plain I knew rolled away beyond this limit for 
nearly ten times the distance of what I could see. 
On that camping-ground of the Mississippi Valley I 
knew that all the races of Europe were growing into 
a single people, to the undoing, it might be said, of 
Babel's divisions and confusions of speech. The 



122 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

stream which arose out of the snow-reserve at the 
bottom of the precipice hard by poured down all the 
way into the Platte Valley, then into the Mississippi, 
and at length flowed into the Gulf of Mexico after 
running for over three thousand miles. This was 
on the Atlantic Slope. But I could see another little 
stream with green grass by its edge, running down 
on the south-west side. That I knew was an affluent 
of the Rio Grande, called elsewhere the Colorado 
River, running as it did through the mile-deep many- 
coloured Arizona Canyon. Then after hundreds of 
miles of its amazing burrowing, it coursed through a 
bit of the desert and fell into the vermilion Sea of 
Cortez. That was on the Pacific Slope ; for the Sea 
of Cortez opened into the Pacific Ocean. 

Memories arose of the mountain summits which in 
Holy Writ were the places sacred to visions of the 
destinies of the world. I recalled how the Idealist 
Legislator had watched in spirit from Pisgah the 
foreboding of all racial unions in the trooping of the 
Twelve Tribes into the Land of Promise. 

I recalled Ezekiel's vision of the reconstruction of 
Israel, fulfilled initially in a sense, where a Hebrew 
population fill in four-tenths of the numbers of the 
chief city of the Western Continent. 

I recalled how the Seer of Patmos from his tran- 
scending summit wrote down once and for ever the 
destinies of humanity in the vision of a City of Union 



CENTENNIAL STATE OF COLORADO 123 

and Peace with life-giving fruits of the trees beside its 
waters. 

One could not help but pray at this high altar of 
America in the words of the Glory be to God on 
High for peace and brotherhood suggested in the 
union of the races in this panorama of the Atlantic 
and Pacific slopes. One could not but repeat the 
words of the I believe, an act of faith in the Spirit, 
the Lord, the Vivifier of the nations — the pledge of 
a final politics of friendliness between the nations, of 
a final Church of the brotherhood of all peoples. 

I turned downwards, and without having to camp 
out the night I got home into Silver Plume in 
brilliant moonlit scenes at half-past eight, having 
climbed most of the day in a journey, in all, of nearly 
twenty-four miles to the top of Torrey's Peak and 
back. 



124 THE LAND OF PROMISE 



CHAPTER Vn 

YOUNG AMERICA 

We have not yet sketched the shrine of wild nature 
beyond the eastern watershed of the Cordilleras, nor 
reported of the terrestrial paradise of flowers, fruit- 
trees, and woodlands of California, by the fair slopes 
of the Sierra Nevadas. Moreover, there are the genial 
States of the South with their courteous peoples, their 
cotton and tobacco fields, their new industrialism, 
all worthy of a study outside the limits of this book. 
New England itself, wrapt up with cultured traditions, 
and marked with unique traits, may only receive the 
consideration due to its influence in the structural 
building of the main institutional edifice of the United 
States. The Southern States and New England, 
therefore, only enter into the plan of this sketch of 
the main actualities of American life in so far as they 
have each contributed to the central trunk of civilisa- 
tion of the Mississippi plain and Western America. 
The South had originally sent a multitude of adven- 
turers from Virginia and the Carolinas through 
Tennessee and Kentucky in a long marching proces- 



YOUNG AMERICA 125 

sion all the way by the Oregon Trail to the North- 
western States of Washington and Oregon. At a 
later date the men of the South kept more within 
their southern zone as the northern emigrants 
followed up and filled in the regions that the adven- 
turous first settlers had left for them. 

The North- Western States, again, well worthy of 
special study, are really the settlement of finished 
types of America flocking into the rich sunny districts 
of Idaho and Montana, and taking up lands by the 
rivers of Oregon and Washington. Of late the 
Scandinavian immigration into the northern border 
States of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas 
has given a vast impetus to the organisation and 
cultivation of these States. A few Norwegian settle- 
ments have kept their language, but all have readily 
adopted American institutions. The Scandinavians, 
in fact, are more immediately at home in several 
important States of the Union than any other settlers 
whatever ; and where they settle there is little heard 
of the immense obstacles in the way of assimilation 
which are felt where races, alien to American indi- 
vidualism settle, and unwittingly and unintentionally 
give momentum to backward tendencies, and facilitate 
the cleavage which has opened in some States 
between the capitalist and working-classes. 

In aiming therefore at showing the structural unity 
of the United States I have pictured the financial 



126 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

centralising power of New York City. I have shown 
how the exceedingly various coastal population of 
the Atlantic sea-board joined together once for a 
great trunk unification of American life in a region 
beyond the Alleghanies. I have recalled how a 
territory all one in its natural site, and also vast 
enough in its extension, welcomed in the great ex- 
periment at social unification, which is at the root of 
the civilisation of this vast continental area. 

I have sketched the position of Chicago as an im- 
perial capital of the other capitals on the Mississippi 
plains. I have shown it to be the supreme railroad 
junction of the United States, gathering up in one 
not only the chief railroads but storing the freight for 
interchange and gathering a huge population for this 
work of clearance and the special industries associated 
with it in its commanding site. 

As Colorado is on the western limits of the great 
central plains of America, though it is outside the 
Chicago radius in its industries ; and as it epitomises 
the American ideals and population of the greater 
portion of America, there are two unifying aspects of 
all this great central heart of life which deserve to be 
set down from the point of view of their Colorado out- 
look. These are, first, the living tradition of America 
in training the early mind of American childhood and 
youth, in a sense even prior to the education of the 
public schools. The second is the individuality of 



YOUNG AMERICA 127 

American women as a living power in the social 
unification of the trunk life of the central American 
world. In this chapter we write of the first of these. 

Young America in all these regions seems to pass 
through its awakening at about the age of three 
years. The elders have a way, ever, of acting ' com- 
rade ' to the American child from his earliest years. 
Treated as a fellow-spirit, the child becomes what he 
is taken to be. This sense of equality in intellectual 
fellowship captivates the American child-world. An 
all-facing assurance to all neighbours and all new- 
comers is thereby struck into the soul. Thus the 
spirituality, the imperious, sovereignly, conquering 
experience of a great people's history is shared in 
and imparted to the new compeer of the doers of 
that great deed, which is America. 

When the age of awakening reason arrives, all 
America strains itself with anxiety to make the com- 
munication of the American learning about things 
gracious, easy, simple and picturesque — allusive also 
rather than imperative — to the young kings and 
queens. Their youthful majesties thus have the 
news of the 'comrade' America and 'comrade' Cosmos 
broken, in the gentlest of manners, to their suscep- 
tive ears. 

Child-life in America comes to be really more of a 
descent than an ascent. In England one sees time 
and again a household paying its good-humoured 



128 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

respects to baby. The difference between England 
and America is that England has a rooted conviction 
that the babe is utterly unconscious of the respect of 
its admirers. But America is wholly convinced, and 
has made up its mind definitely, that the young child 
can take it all in. The child is given kingship and 
becomes the king — vox populi, vox dei. In England 
there is a condescending note about baby-worship 
which really forbids the world's respect to be com- 
municable. In America it is an article of faith that 
the reverence of the courtiers is understood, appre- 
ciated, and acted by. By a nation's * imperative 
suggestion,' to borrow a term from the psychists, it 
thus soon happens that the manner of intelligence 
and fighting volition of the surrounding court of 
elders is communicated once and for ever to the 
American child. 

After adoring humanity has revealed itself as a 
comrade to the child, it begins to undertake the 
educational task of communicating the secret of the 
' spirit of things.' This ^spirit of things' is the living 
animation of the great Cosmos, revealing itself in 
art or nature, in the environment of home, of streets, 
of earth, and sky, and sea. The child is taught to 
believe by every act, hint, allusion, and suggestion 
that is within the elders' power to make, that the 
round world and all within it is just one 'thing,' or 
' one being,' all compact enough to be treated as alive. 



YOUNG AMERICA 129 

He is made to feel that the ^world-thing' has char- 
acter, mind, temper, feeling and sensibility of its 
own. The world being a live single unit, it can some- 
how be befriended, understood, taken in as a whole 
and fraternised with. The American, moreover, 
reads something of his own irrepressible good spirits 
into the comrade Cosmos, with whom the child must 
daily and momentarily come in contact. The child 
thus learns that one can be an equal with comrade 
Thing, know him, befriend him, get out his secrets, 
humour him. In a sense, as two fellows may be said 
to master one another, he learns that he can master 
Thing and all that he is and has. Thus it is that the 
assurance imparted to the child by the elders about 
persons, through the manner in which they show 
deference to the child, is communicated with a whole- 
ness and an indestructability which are shown in 
the child's subsequent lifelong attitude towards that 
Summed Thing which is everything in the world 
that is not man. 

From henceforth the young American is imperturb- 
able to all creation. He feels the same imperturb- 
ability towards his comrade the World, as he does 
towards his comrade Man. He owns it too, as one 
comrade owns another. This friendly mastery has 
made it full of reserved delights for him. Here we 
find- the reason for the uncommon fascination which 
the animal creation possesses for the American child- 

I 



I30 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

mind. This fascination has its analogue in the 
English man-mind. There are ups and downs in 
America's nature study, and periods of enhanced or 
deficient national interest. But since the American 
child feels that he owns the world, the apparition of 
strange birds upon his domain arouses immediately 
a kind of half-humorous interest. It is chiefly this 
interest which is catered for in the pictures appearing 
in the Children's Supplements of the American 
Sunday Press. I once went out early on a Sunday 
train to a mining camp beyond a holiday resort. 
Every man and woman in the train had a Sunday 
paper. I saw the children patiently waiting, and at 
length they were, in most cases, given the pictorial 
supplement, filled with adventures of wild beasts, and 
they were rapt in interest at once. Unfortunately the 
delight in this supposititious, humorous animal world 
has created a demand for an exaggerated natural his- 
tory. But of late there has been a true and solid 
spread of enlightened knowledge of the animal and 
botanical world throughout all the United States. 
Book-shops are often packed full of nature books. 

On the whole the child impresses its mind upon the 
school in America, rather than receives its mental 
impress from the school ; America itself, being the 
supreme educational fact, has already undertaken the 
chief lesson of the instruction before the official 
schoolmaster. 



YOUNG AMERICA 131 

Moreover, in the whole of America, school is not 
taken to be a place for tasks, but rather for easi- 
nesses. The English ideal is to give children 
something to conquer, something arduous to under- 
take, difficult to understand, hard to remember, yet 
just possible, granted discipline and the evocation of 
a sturdy character. The American educational ideal 
is unto a scientific awakening of interest, the filling 
in of time with such interested preoccupation that the 
child will forget he is learning at all. The American 
teacher feels bound to abolish utterly all obstacles 
between the child and knowledge. Instead of aiding 
the child to climb the mountain, so to say, he bends 
the top of the mountain down in order that youth 
may easily and gracefully leap on to the summit. 

Thus history is regarded as an exciting romance. 
Its subject-matter takes the form of the careers of 
individuals. In reading of these the youth is made 
to feel that he himself might easily have been the 
hero of the story and have filled the same niche as 
the men who braved the long winter at Valley Forge 
with Washington's army, or who contested the line 
of the Rappahanock in the Civil War. 

Arithmetic is felt to be the exciting science of each 
one's own standing, position, and security in the 
commonwealth. It is the foundation to the sport and 
fun and fortunes of the world. 

Geography is the story of an adventurous world- 



132 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

trip, or rather an interesting account of the pilgrimage 
of the United States ; for America is a big enough 
world to be the main subject of school geography- 
lessons ; and through the knowledge imparted, every 
American is intended to hold himself in readiness to 
fly across from end to end. 

Then there is physical science and mechanics. The 
young American is trained to know that the Cosmos 
and its treasures are unlocked by the mechanical 
key. It is the weapon of his fortune. It is the 
exquisite instrument sharpened by mathematics for 
carving out his own possessions. He takes it all 
in as a man would take the means to go through his 
prospective estate to which he was given the right of 
entry, with all keys, secrets, and conveyances, before 
the actual right of possession. 

Then there is reading. Every American learns 
how to read well. Reading well means holding his 
own among his attentive rivals. He must read, 
recite ; address his fellows, become an orator, be able 
to converse with all men and all women, at home or 
abroad. He must argue with, debate with, emulate, 
rival, subdue the world by making that appeal which 
is in reality the word of command to all the world so 
to do. 

Then the glimpses of the classical world are taken. 
Latin is included in the nine or ten year course of 
the public school at all the insignificant ' cities' (in 



YOUNG AMERICA 133 

England ' villages') in which I have been along the 
banks of the Republican River in unprosperous West 
Nebraska, and in irrigation cities and the low-grade 
mining settlements in Colorado, all of under one 
thousand in population. All the way up to the great 
classicists, like Dr. Benjamin Ide Wheeler, of the 
University of California, American classicism is a 
whole heaven away from the classicism of the 
secluded thought-cult of English university men. 
Every American teacher aims at opening out the 
classical point of view. He would make you feel 
the point of contact between yourself and the Greek 
and Roman hedonists and intellectual aristocrats. 
The English don, of course, aims at giving you the 
reserve, the balance, the self-restraint, that aloof 
possession of a Virgil or Horace ; in fact that aloof 
perception of worldliness which is really so little of 
the world. This humanisation of learning has its 
* City of Light ' at the famous American institution 
called Chatauqua. In the holiday-time crowds flock 
to this delightful lake-resort. Thither world-famed 
professors of Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Pennsylvania, 
Columbia, and Princeton come to chatter away 
in easy conversational lectures on the substance 
of their more serious lectures to the college classes 
in which they must maintain their repute with 
world-rivals. I have not been to this City of Light, 
but Chatauqua organisations have spread everywhere. 



134 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

When I was in Denver there was a Chatauqua 
gathering at Boulder City, the site of the State 
University, where also a canyon opens out to the 
plain. A galaxy of light-bearers gathered here from 
Pacific and Atlantic colleges, among whom were men 
of world renown. The conversational classes were 
packed with intellectual holiday-makers, and hundreds 
went away equipped with multifarious new interests 
from out the world- panoramas to make life more 
keen. 

America, however, is the last country in the world 
to play with education. The very fact that there is 
an intellectual holiday like Chatauqua serves to prove 
the grim reality of the filling-up of courses ; for it is 
often possible by attendance at such summer schools 
to qualify for university courses which otherwise 
require residence during a school semester. 

In every instance, the parents, even if themselves 
uneducated foreigners, are determined with passionate 
ardour to give their children a full and serious educa- 
tion at any cost. I know of a place, a few miles from 
where I once worked in the wilds of the Rockies, 
where a school was kept going, and its stove lit 
every morning, and a teacher attended with a salary 
of $60 (;£"i2) a month for one solitary child. In 
another place with forty-five inhabitants, I knew the 
teacher, and used to visit a school where there were 
but three children. This was in one of the high 



YOUNG AMERICA 135 

mountain regions where schools only open during 
the summer, the snow in winter preventing their 
continuance throughout the year. Yet more to show 
the serious side of education, this teacher, who was 
a girl of eighteen years, was performing the almost 
miracle of educating herself when not teaching, 
entirely out of her own earnings. Putting by the 
summer savings, she was just in time to start the 
university course after the long holiday. She paid 
for her own board and lodging, and university fees, 
from her earnings. At the end of the scholastic 
year on the plains she was ready once more to go 
back to teach and earn for next year in the summer 
mountain resort. This I heard was quite a custom 
in Colorado, and the fact that a teacher would re- 
nounce all holidays in order to win the educational 
crown, proves that the determination to learn is both 
heroic and unconquerable. 

As to the links between the lowest and highest 
education, any Colorado child can get an eight years' 
free course in the local public school. Then he or 
she can in some places finish off in the same school 
another two years in the beginnings of a virtual high 
school course. It would then be wise to attend the 
East Denver High School, or else the Manual 
Training School. The East Denver High School 
is an advanced and efficient institution with over a 
thousand scholars, and its coveted honours give 



136 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

scholars the entry to any of the great universities 
in the Eastern States. 

Another opening is the free preparatory school, 
minus, of course, the cost of board, at the State 
University at Boulder, finishing with the free Uni- 
versity course itself. This university teaches classics, 
philosophy and history. Then there is Denver 
University, under the patronage of the Methodists ; 
and Colorado College, a most efficient institution. 
Also the Presbyterians are organising a university 
of their own. Considering that these institutions 
are practically free, and that the entire State of 
Colorado had scarcely 600,000 inhabitants when I was 
there, the number of educational openings free to all 
the world evidently surpassed those of any other 
country. There are first-class professors, but it is 
obvious that in such a young State as Colorado, the 
colleges are only in the process of creating an esprit 
de corps J together with a ' social tradition ' of culture. 
Moreover, the objects of a State education must fit in 
with the foundation industries of the country, with- 
out whose success there would be no universities at 
all. The social fabric of Colorado is founded upon 
its mining and agriculture. Accordingly the two 
branches of the university, in which are the most 
individual achievements of the State in education, are 
a School of Mines and an Agricultural College. The 
mining school is at Golden City, at the gateway of 



YOUNG AMERICA 137 

the Gilpin County gold belt. The Agricultural 
College is at Greeley, due north of Denver, in the 
midst of a great, flat, irrigated garden, fed by the 
mountain tributaries of the South Platte. 

Colorado mining, to the extent of at least ninety 
per cent., is sustained only by the very perfection of 
applied chemical science. The School of Mines was 
instituted to conquer the mining difficulties of the 
State, and the three great mining centres of Cripple 
Creek, Telluride, and Gilpin County, which produce 
to the value of seven millions sterling per year, are 
manned by the experts of this now famous State- 
supported school. 

The settlement of Greeley and its Agricultural 
College have an equally interesting history. Old 
Horace Greeley, to whom all Americans were wont 
to listen, used to say to the young men, ' Go West ! ' 
In honour of this humanitarian statesman, the immi- 
grants founded a model city fifty miles north of 
Denver, whose title-deeds prohibited the building or 
use of a house for liquor traffic. This model town- 
ship has piloted the agriculture of Colorado till ready 
to out-top in value the entire mineral output. The 
Colorado man knows the average gallon-flow that 
comes into the plains from the mountain streams. 
He knows also, by ditches with the minimum fall of 
one inch in sixteen yards, the exact amount of earth 
that he can enclose with the paradise-making waters. 



138 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

He equips a university to drill an army of trained 
men to organise a conquest of every square yard of 
earth by every gallon of available water. In conse- 
quence of such scientific absorption of head-waters, 
a fierce inter-State legal contest came off between 
Kansas and Colorado. From the great river Arkansas 
never a drop flowed into the State of Kansas ; it had 
all been appropriated by the judicious water engineers 
of Colorado. An equally exhaustive use of the State 
waters was attempted elsewhere. Colorado was at 
this time importing |7, 000,000 of produce. Where- 
upon the real statesmen of Colorado were filling up 
huge reservoirs in Shenandoah Valley and tunnelling 
into the dried valley behind Uncompahgre to tap the 
otherwise useless waters ot the rock-shut Gunnison. 
By irrigating new land they meant to reduce to nil 
the amount of the imported produce. The men from 
Greeley College are well equipped to accomplish 
such tasks. 

It is these economic actualities which really shape 
the final course of education in Colorado and America. 
The girl may be serious about culture and the 
Muses and the Graces, but the boy learns that the 
stability, the security, the repose, the entire status of 
his future position in society depends on the deep 
rootings of his life -position in those earth -values 
without which Colorado would be an uninhabited 
desert. If he cannot adventure into the economic 



YOUNG AMERICA 139 

founding of the world, he will be but a plaything, 
carried on the earth-bearing, atlantean shoulders of 
those who do achieve. Society, he sees, is an orderly 
administration of the State economics, decorated, as 
some would have it, with religion, politics, culture. 
He hastens to join the world-staff of the men who do 
things. He fills in all the later courses of education 
solely for the purpose of scientific equipment in the 
art of gaining world-power by supplying world-needs. 
Thus all science becomes part of world-economics, of 
world-produce, and all culture becomes the art of 
leading and mastering men. When a preacher had 
once paradoxically compared John D. Rockefeller to 
Shakespeare, I was telling one who had been a 
university Latin teacher what a joke the comparison 
was. But he answered that while it was farcical to 
talk that way, yet, in a sense, the comparison was 
true. The triumph of a Rockefeller was purely the 
outcome of his knowledge of men. If all he knew, 
or spoke, or thought of his fellows were put down in 
rhythmic words, it would make a vivid drama that 
would make the comparison good. A Shakespeare, 
I suppose, to a more thoughtful American is an in- 
spiritor of a nation's life-forces in empire-building 
and world-conquest. At every character-building of 
his soul-evoking words, Shakespeare stored the life- 
energy of the English world. He closes up its ranks 
for battling over world-supplies of a forthcoming and 



I40 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

multiplied mankind. True or false may be this com- 
parison of Rockefeller with Shakespeare, but it truth- 
fully illustrates how America recognises the economic 
groundings of human power and enterprise. In 
defence one can only recall the words of Ezekiel, 
who, in the midst of an amazing spiritual vision of 
the future Israel, did not forget the practical direction 
not to work dry the marshes of Araba for the sake 
of their salt. 



THE WOMEN OF AMERICA 141 



CHAPTER Vni 

THE WOMEN OF AMERICA 

In the early days of the settlement of the West the 
women took an adventurous part in founding a new 
civilisation, the story of which would amount to 
romance in real life. No doubt the granting of the 
franchise to women in Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, 
Montana, Utah, was much the result of their adven- 
turous activities in the pioneer days. To-day the 
only adventurous life for women, hereabouts, is that 
which is deliberately sought for by the girl under- 
graduates from the colleges who may chance to 
spend their summer holidays in the wilds. For the 
rest, a town of Nebraska and Colorado is as much in 
a fixed civilisation as any English country town. One 
must therefore associate the women of the settled 
portion of the West with the women of the rest of 
the United States. Colorado women are not isolated 
from their sisters in all the other States ; but they 
are, in a true sense, leaders of women in other States, 
through their independent culture, their political 
emancipation, and also by the effective and business- 



142 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

like type of social reform they have helped to bring 
into effect in Colorado. These reforms relate mostly 
to children's labour, parental responsibility, and 
education, and the manner of dealing with child 
delinquents. 

These few following remarks, therefore, of the uni- 
fying force of the position and influence of women in 
America, relate mainly to the entire central area of 
the United States ; but the attempted appreciation of 
this position and influence is written more especially 
from the point of view of the State of Colorado. 

The domestic architecture and domestic habits of 
Western America fit in with its mostly servantless 
character. The homes of these Americans are one- 
storied, and the interiors have a Romanesque open- 
ness, except for their massive curtains. The use of 
automatons and many a miracle of cooking, sweep- 
ing, and cleaning apparatus, big stores of canned 
cooked goods ready for immediate use, all go to ease 
the overburdened housewife. She retains her culture 
and has her intellectual intervals, certainly not 
through a less assumption of household duties than 
other women throughout the world are wont to 
undertake. In the West, on average, there are not 
one-fifth of the domestics employed in England ; 
consequently the women-folk as a whole must work 
five times as much on the average also. For this 
reason scientific management has to take much of 



THE WOMEN OF AMERICA 143 

the place of the domestic servant, here called the 
* hired help.' 

But, work or no work, the reputation of the woman 
of the West for intelligence and culture is none the 
less well-sustained. She learns comportment, ad- 
dress, and the art of comradeship with men, from 
the moment of entry into the public school, since all 
these schools of America, being mixed, are the initial 
social centres of America. 

The gift of sociability and address, the art of in- 
telligently meeting all the world, is thus proper to 
every woman in the Northern States. The girl grows 
up as a playmate of the boy, and it is thus that she 
grows to be the perpetual playmate, not the thought- 
mate, nor the thinker-together with men. At the age 
of twelve girls have grown intellectually aloof from 
boys. Throughout America there is a huge-waved 
onward tradition of woman's culture which is a 
closed-up freemasonry to the world without. The 
building of a magic garden has been fostered by 
what may be called the humanisation of the teaching 
art of the building and cultivation of character. But 
it has not arisen through the existence of a mystic 
vision of the woman's world, neither has it arisen 
from the facts which are taught, which, of course, are 
the same for all the world and both sexes. In in- 
stance of the waved intelligence apart from literal 
teaching : a Colorado girl of eleven, whom I met in 



144 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

Colorado once, and again in England, was wont to 
usher friends through as many as twelve Oxford 
Colleges in a morning. To her the colleges were 
fairy scenes in real stone and wood and portly men. 
The show rooms of every college she knew by heart, 
with the periods of the stained glass, the porters' 
lodges, and the fees required. But, having mostly 
stayed at home, she knew practically nothing at all 
about the reading, writing, and arithmetic of school. 
This freemasonry of knowledge is the reserved 
arcanum of the sources of strength, individuality, 
and leadership of American women in after years. 
By the age of sixteen or seventeen the American girl 
is an imperative leader in amusement and the gentler 
forms of play. She is accustomed to comradeship 
with men, but on account of deeper knowledge she 
now assumes leadership. The young man who is 
entering the business world with seventy-five dollars 
a month has all he can do to satisfy his girl-comrade's 
intelligent cultured wants. Not that she is extrava- 
gant, but she is filled with cultured interest and 
boundless energy ; and life would be unbearable for 
her if these interests were not satisfied. Music, 
theatres, dancing, riding, socials, house - parties, 
follow one another in a round procession through- 
out the year. Then comes the period of the long 
journeyings to see the drama of the world-play in all 
the lands of the earth. For equipment here she has 



THE WOMEN OF AMERICA 145 

conversational knowledge on every topic to be faced 
in the new nation - acquaintances, with instinctive 
adaptive powers. But, as mere book-learning is not 
in favour, this necessity for equipment in learning is 
revenged upon with a caustic, humorous shaping of 
its rudiments, giving the final accomplishment the 
impressed stamp of practicality and savoir faire. 

Out of the wanderings of this world-class the 
American home life grows rich with the adornments 
and graces, say of the classical years, or of the medi- 
aeval Renaissance. The girl-visionary may recall 
Botticelli's angels from their world-memories in 
pictures and associations into reality by living again 
in the moral beauty of which they are the emblem, 
and by acquiring the graces which they memorialise. 
She may reincarnate the noble women of Florence 
or return with Venetian composure into the Western 
world. The simplicity and humanity of both Early 
and Late Christian Renaissance in Italy has the most 
self-interpretative fascination for the modern indi- 
vidualist American woman. 

Associations and impressions deep enough to re- 
incarnate spirits among those who make friends in 
Bygone Italy are compensated for by all who cannot 
go abroad by a brave effort to re-live the past in the 
faint reconstructions of former things in literature. 
I have met a mother and daughter in a small ranche 
in the midst of the mountains, studying a regular 

K 



146 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

literary course, in a periodical, on the historic as- 
sociations of the counties of England. They were 
immersed in Staffordshire at the time. 

Gradually, too, if the girl is not to remain as an 
active spirit on the home executive, to guide, shape, 
engineer the household's life with her ministrations, 
she settles to a career as a leading life interest. This 
may be education, music, office-work, in a sense 
religion, or one of the professions. If she should 
become the mistress of a household with such 
momentum and capacity for leadership to start with, 
it is evident that not even the arduous domesticity of 
the servantless West can prevent the advance of 
cultured interests. When I was once in a mining 
city far from the capital of the State, the mistresses 
of households vied with each other in displaying 
libraries. The hotel manageress had just got in 
an edition de luxe of R. L. Stevenson ; another 
housewife had the standard Meredith ; another the 
large edition of Emerson and all kindred writers. 
At the Fortnightly Club here the ladies were ex- 
pected in turn to champion their favourite novelist — 
Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, or Mrs. 
Humphry Ward — in a written essay which they had 
to read and defend against all oncomers. 

In matronly years the mantle of prophetess always 
to an extent falls unbidden upon the American 
woman's shoulders, Her spiritual interests being 



THE WOMEN OF AMERICA 147 

no longer a matter of mere spiritual entertainment, 
her power through them may be exercised in a kind 
of a lay pastorate. She may be a pillar of ortho- 
doxy, an apostle of early Renaissance culture, 
an exponent of the sacred wisdom of the Orient. 
More likely than not her individual ^cult* may be of 
one of the types of self-knowledge with a theosophic 
tinge, or one of the * New Thought ' systems that she 
has learned to apply. Or very likely she may be a 
^healer' of physical, mental or moral ills. She is 
always much more than her *cult,' making it but 
the sacramental sign of personal power ; thereby 
obliterating its crudities and giving it a social mean- 
ing and actuality which cannot be set down on paper. 

One knows too and reveres the matriarch, inspiring 
the younger generation with faith, and revealing a 
richness of the wisdom of experience which through 
no other way can be shed upon the world. 

In this story of the unfolding of all the graces, the 
leading truth about the situation is that their emanci- 
pation has not left American women the less, but 
rather the more womanly than their less emancipated 
sisters of certain other countries. The growth of the 
individuality of a woman multiplies her contrasts 
with man. It evokes, develops, strengthens and en- 
forces them. But a significant note of the American 
woman's individuality is that it is the fair fulfilment 
of a native grace from childhood, and that it there- 



148 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

fore came from God. Being the unfoldment of a 
native gift, its achievement is of no mere passing 
fashion of an age. This is directly proved in the 
fact that the very notes of this womanly soul-contrast 
with man in after life begin most decisively to develop 
in quite early years of home or school life. The 
characteristics which have made the world-fame of 
American women are founded really in the womanly 
freemasonry of the early years of home and school, 
or one might say of the entourage of that child- 
society which is centred in the home and school and 
reaches everywhere. 

And after what has been said about the toils of 
Western women, it cannot be said that woman's 
emancipation has led to any lessening of the fulfil- 
ment of house duties. It is therefore broadly 
true to say that in giving women equality with 
men in every respect, emancipation has widened the 
contrasts between man and woman. The exact 
reverse to the objections that emancipation was 
lessening the world-enriching inequalities of life has 
proved to be the paramount feature of this phase of 
American social experience. 

The complaint is rather that the woman, cultured 
in the romantic seclusion of a Wellesley College, is 
so distinct from the rest of the world in ethical intui- 
tions of every kind of ideality and desire to live for 
heroism, that the close-ruled matter-of-fact worldly 



THE WOMEN OF AMERICA 149 

element of home-life often exerts a melancholy influ- 
ence on her return from college life. The social 
conventions of the dominant worldliness here forbid 
her entrance into a heroism of social consecration, 
responding to the idealism which college education 
has evoked. 

The only permanent advance in creating spheres 
of activity worthy of the ability made ready to enter 
them is the economic and political, as well as the 
social and educational emancipation of woman. 
Wherever women have entered the professions 
economic emancipation is safely won. In other 
cases the axiomatic law that to give is to take, comes 
into effect. Men build the family fortunes, and the 
best of the containing securities go to give women 
independent dowries ; but this means that the family 
prestige as interpreted by the fortune-builder is 
the real controlling power. The fortune-building 
American is an absolute liberal as to religion, culture, 
tastes and interests ; but in the one subject of the 
ethics of his fortune building he is undisputed sove- 
reign and autocrat. Whether the ideals of a Wellesley 
College concerning riches and the solidarity of man- 
kind, the brotherhood of men, the sisterhood of 
women, the divineness of social service, and the 
ideals of the fortune-builder can be harnessed together 
in the labour of social regeneration is perhaps the 
most crucial of problems of American life. No read- 



I50 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

ing, study, education, training, culture, knowledge 
of old-world problems without political emancipation, 
can weigh in the balance, in moulding social ideals, 
against the dictating power sprung from responsibility 
in managing the industries of a commonwealth. 
Without political rights as an offset against the 
controlling influence of the plutocracy, the power of 
mere culture is but a decorative or delegated power. 
Every woman in America who earns her own liveli- 
hood is free from the control of the fortune-builder's 
perhaps unwitting or unconscious influence. Yet 
these professions for women, with rare exceptions, 
are never the primary, leading, authoritative, sove- 
reign positions which control the cosmic energies in 
industry. Having lived in politically emancipated 
Colorado, it seems that the necessary adjunct of the 
culture-emancipation of women is their scientific use 
of the franchise. Then the social position of women 
in the commonwealth might not be in arbitrary 
dependency on the ethics of the fortune-builders : 
rather it might be grounded directly and independ- 
ently upon the constitution, the laws, the basal fabric 
of the commonwealth, upon which capital and labour, 
man and woman, should stand in indistinguishable 
equality. For the great republic of America is 
deeper than any of the industrial organisations of 
its fortune-making. The social position of women 
should not be given as the arbitary gift of the busi- 



THE WOMEN OF AMERICA 151 

ness success of man. At least, so say the Emancipa- 
tion States. It should be the free and inalienable 
gift of the idealism, and hence the heroism, which are 
in the composition of the Constitution of America. 

The too great, rather than too little a contrast 
between the women and men of the industrial com- 
monwealth of America might thereby perchance be 
remedied. 

Remarks on the working of the complete Colorado 
Suffrage for Women are here perhaps called for. 

A resident once under the Woman Suffrage rule 
of Colorado, reasons afterwards seemed to me to 
be required why women should not vote rather 
than why they should. Granted democracy, if women 
are not to vote, they ought to have the power to decide 
not to do so for themselves. In Colorado, having got 
this power with the franchise, women have decided 
for themselves that it is right to use the vote. The 
fact that nearly fifty per cent, of the actual voters of 
the State of Colorado are women, proves that they are 
not backward to use their political power in the 
ballot-box. 

On Election Day in a mid-mountain area where I 
was staying, all the light buggies were appropriated, 
and the sight of their hats and veils from the distance 
denoted that their wearers, the women voters, were 
converging from all the outlying ranches towards 
the polling stations. 



152 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

The need of all these conveyances for driving 
women voters sometimes made the election bosses 
use strong language. 

And if women vote so freely they also vote inde- 
pendently. It was a common saying in Colorado 
that married women voted contrary to their husbands, 
and certainly without a modicum of domestic friction. 
The Colorado man voter is entirely pleased rather 
than offended if his wife cares to cultivate her own 
pet political interest. 

The man voter in the State, himself, studies ques- 
tions such as the tariff to protect the new beet-sugar 
industries of Colorado ; bi-metallism, as affecting his 
closed silver-mines ; or an amendment to the Consti- 
tution of the State touching the taxation of unused 
sites of mines or of railroad property. Or he favours 
the Citizens' Alliance against Trades Unions, or vice 
versa. He supports or assails the militant policy of 
a State governor in enforcing martial law in disturbed 
mining areas. 

The woman voter sees the world from an entirely 
different viewpoint from the man. She sees it none 
the less in a viewpoint equally real and businesslike. 
Herein must rest the justification of the franchise. 

Ruskin was wont to compare Political Economy 
with Domestic Economy ; but no men have ever been 
guided in practice by the moral of Ruskin. In teach- 
ing the ordering of the State as a well-governed 



THE WOMEN OF AMERICA 153 

household, Ruskin fairly interpreted the ruling point 
of view among the women voters of Colorado. To 
the individual members of the Republican and Demo- 
cratic women's political clubs of Denver, the State 
is always presumed to be the expanded home. This 
larger home in the State, the household of the State, 
is considered to need ordering and tidying exactly 
like any home which is a private household. 

I was out at night in the Denver streets when the 
Referendum rejected the women's proposals for the 
model charter which I have alluded to. These 
proposals were no hysterical measures, but were 
closely drafted upon existing city laws and regula- 
tions of Amsterdam, Birmingham, London, Paris, 
and Glasgow. The fault of the projected legislation 
was that it would have tidied the city-home in far too 
sweeping a way. The plans were not unbusiness- 
like ; they were rather too much so. They were as 
businesslike as any woman's close and accurate 
ordering of the family household. This being a new 
conception in the government of a city, the bosses 
raged and got their henchmen to shout defiance in 
the streets. As the adverse returns of each ward 
were posted up with limelight there was loud * rah- 
ing ' and laughter. 

The charter was, however, taken on subsequently 
with considerable toning-down. But the note of a 
domestic and household idea in politics — a thorough- 



154 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

going John Ruskin idea of civic management, — is 
precisely woman's contribution to practical politics. 
Should this domestic, household management of a 
city ever be brought into effect, the misery of great 
cities, the chief blot upon industrial civilisation, would 
hear its death-knell. 

This Ruskinian ideal, however, of ordering, better- 
ing, forming a community into a strong co-operative 
household - commonwealth, will certainly nowhere 
come to pass except through the careful idealising, 
managing genius of women, exercised through the 
franchise. 

The women voters of Colorado therefore did not 
leave their domesticity behind them when they entered 
the arena of Denver city politics. Rather they 
brought their domestic and managing genius into a 
sphere where there was the greatest need of it. They 
aimed at making the city of Denver a more homelike 
place for its inhabitants to live in than ever it had 
been before. 

In State politics, apart from Civic politics, the 
influence of women has asserted itself in a much less 
marked degree. One of the best governors Colorado 
ever had, Alva Adams, was the women-voters' 
candidate. Having later secured his election to 
Congress, Alva Adams retired in over-scrupulosity 
about a reputed double counting of his votes with 
the connivance of the election judges. The women 



THE WOMEN OF AMERICA 155 

thus lost their favourite candidate for representative, 
who on this occasion neither needed, nor certainly 
did not desire, the stuffing of the ballot. 

The women-voters of Colorado, however, always 
secure the election of a woman as chief inspector of 
the schools of the State. And no schools of the union 
are more strenuously up to the ideal standard of 
American educational ideals than those of Colorado. 
There have been severe critics of the Colorado 
women's franchise. The most weighty of their 
criticisms were perhaps those summed up by the 
Colorado Federal judge, Moses Hallett, in a speech 
delivered in Washington, D.C. 

Such critics as these say that women's franchise in 
Colorado has merely added to the total vote of each 
party in a quantitative not in a qualitative sense ; 
that the two women's political clubs of the State 
capital have learned all the slang and all the sub- 
tleties of electioneering, and have given up most 
other callings for political exigencies ; also that cases 
were found of entire want of principle among some 
women-voters. 

The answer to these objections usually given is 
that politics deals with the entire population. Every 
large mass of people contains an objectionable 
element. The democratic principle is not that there 
are no deteriorations in any large masses of the 
population, but that the great majority when rightly 



156 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

instructed is in the main to be trusted. If then the 
enfranchisement of women has made steadily towards 
the extension of the household ideal within the sphere 
of politics, it cannot be objected that time and energy 
have been vainly expended while securing these 
results. Nor can it affect the main rectitude of the 
franchise that in any large mass of men or women 
voters there are an unprincipled few. 

Much less valid are the objections about the place 
of women — the home sphere ; and the so-called danger 
of vulgarisation. The more immutable and the more 
innate are the temperamental differences between men 
and women, the more these qualities are likely to 
assert themselves in the affairs of the commonwealth, 
granted woman's political individuality is recognised. 

The greater the political and economic freedom of 
women, the more effectively is the distinctive and in- 
effaceable note of mind and soul contrast between men 
and women likely to assert itself. 

The domesticity of women's mind is an unalterable 
fact of nature. The ways of politics are notoriously 
changeable conventions. What is based on un- 
changeable facts of nature, namely the mental domes- 
ticity of women, is certain to assert itself against 
what are the changeable conventions of politics. 
Women's franchise as it is exercised in Colorado means 
that the mental domesticity of women is assert- 
ing itself in politics against many methods of evil 



THE WOMEN OF AMERICA 157 

management in state and city affairs. The true and 
effective assertion of the practical domesticity of 
women in political affairs will not only train women 
to be more domestic and more womanly than ever ; it 
will also make for the abolition of a vast amount of 
mismanagement and corruption in the government 
of the modern State. 

In the Eastern States of America the emancipation 
of women has followed other directions rather than 
those of politics. New York is a centre of civilisa- 
tion where the current agitation for women's fran- 
chise finds it difficult to make headway. The reason 
is that, for the present, women's franchise is only 
thinkable in communities that are small, like New 
Zealand or Colorado, or whose citizens are closely 
bound together socially or nationally. Among the 
population of upper New York State, a movement 
for women's franchise might easily meet with success. 
But in an unwieldy cosmopolis with all its shifting 
currents of political strife, the demand for woman's 
suffrage is beset with the gravest of obstacles. 

In New York, Boston, and Philadelphia women's 
activities are more specialised and concentrated on 
particular subjects. One hears of associations for free 
nursing in the crowded tenements of the East Side, 
of fifty recognised ' settlements ' in the New York 
slums, mostly worked by women, and of some public 
action in regard to factories and social betterment. 



158 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

But for the most part emancipation of women in 
the Eastern States is in the direction of culture, 
education, and especially of equipment for business 
careers. Nor must one forget the supreme impul- 
sion that women's interest and consecration and 
activities give to the ordering of the religion of the 
entire United States. 



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT EMPIRE 159 



CHAPTER IX 

THE MOUNTAIN AND DESERT EMPIRE 

Till recently most of the lands of Western America, 
except in the State of Texas, belonged to the American 
nation as a whole. 

Great wilds in the West are still held by all the 
people in common, ready to be portioned out for the 
asking, on easy terms of occupancy. Much land, 
also, now occupied, beyond the hundredth meridian, 
would change hands on the easiest of terms. 

This accounts for America's proprietary interest in 
its western mountain and desert empire at its back 
doors. 

In Colorado any one can have one hundred and 
sixty acres of land immediately beyond the occupied 
irrigational limit. Or a land-hungry man can climb 
the flanks of the mountains to the line above which 
the hauling of logs to the nearest sawmill does not 
pay for the labour involved, and take up a timber 
claim. Or, like a certain famous man of science, the 
Hungarian-American Tesla, one can even stake out 
a mining claim, though there may actually be nought 



i6o THE LAND OF PROMISE 

worth mining, on the top of one of the roof-peaks of 
the United States. 

All Americans feel that these American rocks, 
peaks, deserts and forests are none the less intimately 
their own because they are a not yet personally 
claimed estate. Moreover, the Federal Government 
is now steadily appropriating, from its general 
manner of tenure to some special manner of control 
beneficial to the people, the remaining undisturbed 
forests of the West. Imaginatively, America broods 
over its Western holdings and makes them its dream- 
background, symbolising infinite cosmic vistas and 
sanctified retreats. 

In the East the nation's sense of proprietary 
interest over certain regions is otherwise. New 
England is the Pilgrim-consecrated Palestine of the 
New American Covenant. The mid-South is the Holy 
Land of the War, sacred for the Union of America, 
furrowed with a thousand heroic graves. All the 
Eastern sea-board is sacred to the War of Indepen- 
dence. The mystery world of the western mountains, 
arroyos and deserts is sacred to the stillness and awe 
of thoughts of the Infinite, over which the human 
spirit broods in order to receive its sustenance. 

The broad acres of the arid West have thus come 
to mark and colour the backgrounds of the mind of 
America. There is never a monthly issue of a 
popular magazine without a story or two set in a 



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT EMPIRE i6i 

western environment. Typical rough mountainous 
vistas ; the vertical cuts of gorges ; sand and salt 
and soda deserts ; benched-up mesas ; high marked 
buttes, water-waiting river-beds, called arroyos ; 
tree-folded creeks ; stream-receiving ^ sinks ' bedeck 
the pages of these stories. There are cyclones, 

* chinooks, ' * wash-outs, ' sand-storms, mirages of 
the atmosphere. There are the ' grease-wood, * sage 
bush, cacti, buffalo grass, yucca and mesquite on 
the herbarial foreground. There are the * mountain 
lions ' (cougars), gray wolves, coyotes, jack-rabbits, 
squirrels, gophers, .chipmunks, prairie dogs, prairie 
chickens, bob -cats, gila monsters, momentarily 
crowding the stage, and then retreating into the 
invisible. 

Red Indians have mostly retreated beyond the 
white man's ken ; less slowly in stories of the West 
than in historic fact. The remaining red men are 
mostly close packed within the comfortable reserva- 
tions established for them by the Federal authorities. 
But if Indian * bucks ' figure less within the popular 
stories of raids and shootings and forays and adven- 
tures, there is a true ear-marked Western type of 
men to take their place: ^cock-eyes,' * peg-legs,' 

* buds,' this or that ' bunt,' * kids,' and also ^ gazebos,' 
greasers, mexicanos, dagos and chinks. All these 
strange names have developed around, and describe 
the men. They are the frontiersmen of utmost dare- 

L 



i62 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

deviltry, the desperadoes of numberless forays, shoot- 
ings and heroic rescues, and men of the older 
Spanish American race, Italians and Chinamen. 

After these are the mining types, first taken down 
from the life by Bret Harte, and now shaping them- 
selves in many a way from out those times of early 
fervours. 

Next in order are the college-bred cowboys. A 
cowboy is a man who owns cattle, grazing beyond 
the fixed enclosures ; he may own certain wide 
ranches in Texas, Dakota or New Mexico, or he 
may hold by right of force the entry into the graz- 
ing districts of Wyoming or Oregon. 

This motley company, fighting, struggling, gam- 
bling, and finally succeeding, are forthcoming ever 
to delight the Eastern readers of the American short 
story, wherein their glorious deeds are duly chronicled 
in swift, short, snappy sentences. Matched with 
them, and equally ready for every drift of fortune, 
is the heroine who holds her own, and fills her part 
without ever a breakdown of nerve. From these 
narratives of fight and romance and fury the wild 
Western scene is as familiar to the million-fold read- 
ing public of America as are the woods, or planta- 
tions, or cornfields, within a mile or two of their own 
residences. Moreover almost every American has 
at some time or another hurried through the Desert 
West on the way to California. His sentiment towards 



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT EMPIRE 163 

the Western deserts is as towards an infinite reserve 
to ponder over, hear from, glimpse at from a railway 
siding, or even to stay at for a week or two at some 
decent hotel. 

For the rest, Americans prefer that there should 
be a Shrine of Mystery filled up with pictures of 
undiscovered gold-mines, and of infinite retreats from 
the world, and with many vistas of infinite cosmic 
Beyonds. The wild and woolly West is a land 
better to dream of, or read about and imagine, than 
to know of, in the hardships of its actual life. 

The vast Western Shrine of the Infinitudes may 
be best described as centred around the land-locked 
inter-mountainous areas. It is a basin which has no 
outlet to the sea. Of the many inland lakes which 
absorb the waters of this basin the most famous of 
all is the Great Salt Lake. The lake basin is shut 
off on the north by a westerly deflection of the Front 
Range of the Cordilleras from Colorado, stretching 
towards Montana. The Great Inland Basin ends to 
the east and south at the water-parting of the Colorado 
River. The region about this river is the wildest of 
the wild in the world, with its deserts of Mohave 
and Death Valley and Salton. The major portion 
of Utah and Nevada, together with south-eastern 
California, Arizona, and New Mexico, form a high- 
land desert, laid out in vast geometric vistas with 
recurring mountain ridges ; its land-locked region 



i64 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

sloping around lakes from which there is no exit ; 
in all its confines, sawn with architectural deep river 
cuttings, and dry winding arroyos. 

The Great Salt Lake is itself a fitting vision-centre 
of these dry lands of desert vistas into the beyonds 
of the inhabited world. 

From Denver one usually reaches Salt Lake City 
by sweeping round the enormous rock barrier for 
over one hundred miles to the south. The train I 
left Denver by did so, deflecting at Pueblo, and 
steaming up the narrow three thousand feet vertical 
crack in the mountain wall called the Royal Gorge. 
Thence it ascended the dried lake-bed by Salida, and 
crossed the farther divide beyond the ' City above the 
Clouds' of Leadville. True, there was a shortcut 
' air-line,' a narrow route for light trains from Denver 
up to Leadville, which surmounted the 11,200 feet 
Boreas Pass, within almost a stone's-throw of the 
top rim of the trees which cloak the mountains, called 
the timber-line. 

Crossing by that ^ air-line ' once from Leadville, I 
was feasted with the sights of snowy-headed moun- 
tains, seeming to peep round every moment by the 
windows of the car, and then to fly like whirlwinds 
into the abyss, and leave huge gaps of valleys, 
plains, and gorges, or forests beneath. Then the 
quaint cup-funnelled engine, with double brakes 
ready for emergency by every wheel, would sud- 



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT EMPIRE 165 

denly be seen puffing backwards, opposite the car- 
window, as the train veered a close curve. So ever 
we ascended until the engine-pantings stopped at 
Boreas. After this there was for three hours, except 
while lunching in the flat South Park, the sound of 
the * brakes asqueal ' in the Platte Canyon until we 
got down six thousand feet below Boreas into the 
plains near Denver. 

But on the occasion of my journey to the Pacific 
Slope, I took the through route on the double- 
headed train, which reaches Salt Lake twenty-six 
hours after leaving the Union Depot at the Colorado 
capital. The industry of the Mormon was in evidence 
during all the early hours of the second morning of 
travel by the irrigated sloping plain, sheltered with 
rugged, treeless mountains which rose abruptly on 
every side of the valley. 

The approach is from the east running through an 
opening of the Wasatch Range which bears to the 
north and south. The Utah Mount Nebo is now in 
sight and the fair sweet waters of Lake Utah can be 
seen for a long time, which are as Lake Gallilee to the 
Salt Lake Dead Sea. You now deflect northwards 
by the garden region of the valley through which 
the river called appropriately the Jordan runs into the 
Salt Lake. 

South of Salt Lake, all this country is reminiscent 
in name and configuration of the Holy Land of 



i66 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

Western Syria. Salt Lake City, the City of the 
Saints, and the headquarters of the Mormon faith, 
like Jerusalem, is away off the right bank of the 
river and the inland sea. Mormonism has trans- 
muted the irrigation areas of the Salt Lake basin 
into a continuous garden city. A few miles to the 
west of the capital of Utah is the pleasure resort of 
Saltair, along the beach of the miniature sea. Here 
there is a pier abutting into the waters, and those 
who bathe in the lake find it impossible to sink in 
the salt-weighted, shallow waters. The capital itself 
with its great temple has been described by every 
one who has written of his overland journey. It is 
like any great American city of the West, but is 
exceptionally well-serried with waters and avenues 
of trees. 

The Mormon State was originally a subtle parody 
or political mimicry of the United States itself. The 
first immigrants, as every one will recall, fled thither 
under the leadership of Brigham Young, when the 
followers of Joseph Smith had been driven from the 
confines of the United States. The land reveals 
no physical likeness to the rest of America ; but 
the leaders of the migratory movement mimicked 
American institutions much as a monkey might 
parody a man. They saw that the States were not 
founded upon a common ancestry of blood-relation- 
ship, but upon the acceptance of certain quasi-theo- 



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT EMPIRE 167 

logical beliefs in God's bounty and man's equality. 
The Mormon elders understood better than most 
observers the theocratic foundings of the individuality 
of American nationalism. Accordingly they founded 
in mimicry a miniature autonomous State, resting 
rather upon a theological compact, than on any hope 
of mere racial perpetuity. 

They anticipated, too, if somewhat malignly, the 
practical social trend of American religion, and 
squared every one of their strange dogmas with solid 
social realism. 

Then they adapted to their use the autocratic 
manner of control from the example of American 
business management, and copied from the two most 
successful instances of American church institutions, 
Methodism and the Church of Rome. Mormonism 
is indeed classed as a debased form of Methodism, 
turned upon a political and commercial career. 

The Mormon leaders understood the efficacy of 
American educationalism, and adapted it in an evil 
sense as a scientific moulding power over the minds 
of the simple and the young. Their education, or 
rather uneducation, was the basis of the institution 
of polygamy. 

But as trainers in the ways of thrift and industry, 
the Mormons have never been surpassed. Mor- 
monism, too, however evil, would abolish the pande- 
monium of social evils that have cursed the trail 



i68 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

of industrial civilisation. Its own evils, however, 
are worse than those of our own slum world. By 
depriving women of knowledge and economic in- 
dependence they effected the most consummate con- 
tradiction to the social status of women in Western 
America that is to be found anywhere in the New 
World. As Turks enlisted the Janissaries from 
the ranks of Christians in the early stage of youth, 
and educated them to become the mainstay of the 
Mohammedan propaganda, so did the Mormons find 
their chief recruits for polygamy in the uneducated 
servant class of European countries, and among 
other people of untrained and simple mentality. 

When Brigham Young had collected the followers 
of the martyred Joseph Smith at Deseret, in Utah, 
the site of the present Salt Lake City was in Mexican 
territory. If the United States had not surrounded 
and subdued Utah, there is every likelihood that a 
stable Mormon commonwealth would have been 
founded in the depression of the Western plateaus. 
Mormonism, welded by religious fervour, had all the 
elements of persistence possessed by the earlier settle- 
ment of Massachusetts. But unlike New England, 
it was closed to any real mental development, and 
open only to physical commercial development. It 
was from the beginning closely ruled by custom, 
institution and law. Even when the Edmunds Act 
of the United States Congress suppressed polygamy. 



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT EMPIRE 169 

and when Utah was granted Statehood in 1896, and 
assimilated to the United States, Mormonism as a 
religion was capable of resisting most of the Gentile 
influences except that of American education, which 
came with the influx of Gentile immigration into its 
borders. 

Mormonism gives a weird association to the 
gloomy lake-side where it has colonised. If Mor- 
mons have been invaded in their sanctum, they have 
retaliated by carrying their propaganda into neigh- 
bouring States, and even as far eastward as New 
York. I have met sturdy Mormons in Colorado. 

The Mormon life-history has indeed upset many 
pet theories of modern sociologists ; and no man 
living has yet been able to assign to them their 
cosmic place. 

The train from Salt Lake City to the Pacific runs 
due north, and in time you get the first view of the 
inland miniature sea. Islands rising steeply from the 
waters and mountainous promontories are full in 
view. Farther to the north is Ogden, a city where 
the cars shunt for the Union Pacific Railway system. 

On leaving Ogden, now advancing westwards, 
the afternoon was spent in skirting again the shores 
of that great Lake of Death and unending desola- 
tion. One realises that it is the shrunken remnant 
of a once vast inland sea, a nightmare vision of the 
last days of the world, when life shall have ended, 



I70 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

and the seas are gradually retiring to leave the earth 
as irredeemably desolate as the moon. There was a 
beauty of a weird Other-world in its glassy, weighty 
waters ; in its stillness ; in the stern grandeur of its 
mountains and shores ; in the vistas opened by its 
great expanses, across which, at one point, no shore 
was visible on the opposite side ; in the absence of 
trees, houses, gardens, or a single blade of grass, or 
leaf of anything green, in sight all that afternoon.^ 
From the south-west shores is a wide, flat, lifeless 
desert ; and to the south of this, again, is a hilly 
desert-land, beyond Lake Sevier. Till the coming 
of the railways, a few years ago, around here used to 
be the most inaccessible portion of the United States. 
The corner of north-east Arizona that it includes is 
totally cut asunder from the rest of Arizona by the 
five- mile gulf of the tremendous canyon that cleaves 
the high plateau from east to west. 

The Gould Railway system has now pushed out a 
branch from the Rio Grande Western, through all 
this portion down to Los Angeles, whereby it is put 
in touch with the Pacific from St. Louis. 

But to reach this region formerly from the north 
one had to go down by one of the mining railways, 
and cross the desert for many almost trackless miles. 

^ Mr. Harriman has recently curtailed this route by building a 
line on trestles across a whole arm of the Salt Lake, for use by 
the express trains. 



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT EMPIRE 171 

To reach it from the east one would have to cross 
abyss after abyss of the canyons, cutting down south- 
wards to the Colorado River. Yet the early traders, 
after Wolfskill, were wont to trail through a portion 
of this area on the way from Santa Fe to Los 
Angeles, by making a wide detour to the north. 
This route, called the Spanish Trail, thus evaded 
the impassable canyon descending to the Virgin 
River. The trail approached close to the Colorado 
at its extreme north-west limit. It then skirted the 
rainless Death Valley, which is filled with dusty salt. 
This depression is five hundred feet below sea-level, 
is hemmed with giant mountains, and was once 
significantly marked with human skeletons. 

Only one hundred miles away now to the north- 
west is Mount Whitney, the snowy head-peak of the 
Sierras. The trail reached Los Angeles through the 
gap between the San Gabriel and the San Bernardino 
ranges called the Cajon Pass. 

Due east from Salt Lake one soon reaches Nevada, 
a large-area'd State with only sixty thousand inhabi- 
tants, which sends, nevertheless, as many senators to 
the Federal Congress as does New York State with 
seven millions. Nevada became known to the outer 
world on account of its fabulous Comstock Mine. 
The lode had several bonanzas of almost solid silver 
and gold, and produced metal worth about one 
hundred millions sterling. 



172 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

In Nevada is the beautiful, ever-flowing Humboldt 
River, ending to the west in Humboldt Sink. Several 
fertile valleys, also with rivers flowing into lakes 
without outlets, deflect to the south-west. Some 
distance beyond the Salt Lake the squalid sage-bush 
region terminates, and one reaches the bright African 
desert-land of Western Nevada. The sands are here 
quite level, and light brown in colour. They are un- 
broken except that here and there abrupt clear-cut 
mountains rise like islands out of a sea of sand. 

California is reached some distance before mount- 
ing up the Sierra Divide. On the east slopes of the 
Sierras are many streams and rivers. All of these 
fall into one or other of the inland lakes. These lakes 
are wholly land-locked, and the mountain waters pass 
off by evaporation. Near here are the Carson Lakes, 
and the Tahoe, of magic beauty, rimmed with moun- 
tain pines. The Mono and Owen Lakes lie to the 
south. 

Immediately west of this line of lakes are the great 
Sierra watersheds. The depth of the Sierra snows is 
undreamt of in the Rocky Mountains. Their white 
masses lie from six to ten feet deep. The dark 
green pine-trees look quite black in contrast. The 
Sierra peaks are highest to the south and mount not 
much above the line of timber within sight of the 
line of the Southern Pacific Railway. In descending 
from these highlands one gets glimpses of the three 



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT EMPIRE 173 

thousand feet deep major canyons. The train at one 
point overlooks the forest-filled American Canyon. 
The Yosemite Valley is aligned with the American, 
but it is all vertical and clear cut, and looks like a 
street of amazing giant palaces, revealing, probably, 
some bursting asunder of the lower ascents of the 
Sierras. Descending the Sierras the memories of the 
desert and the nine months of withered grass of the 
arid region are soon effaced. Vistas open of a 
universe of tree-beset mountain slopes, of a bright 
green, treeless, rounded hill-country, and a paradise 
of flowers and fruits in all the valleys below. 

The trees bedeck the mountain descents in great 
swathing zones of greenery of every tint and hue. 
Highest are the black-green pines, then spruces, 
light firs, redwood, and the primaeval sequoias, which 
transcend the tree-world in their size, their actual 
age from before the Christian era, and their geo- 
logical ancestry, which dates from the primitive world 
of the giant ferns. Lower are the light green, copper, 
and silver of the under tree-glades on reddish soil, 
with lightly besprinkled grass. These clothe the 
glades leading to the valleys. The sight of the vast 
hilly grasslands, beyond, in their moist warm atmo- 
sphere, seemed, while I ran through in the train, as a 
reminiscent, hazy dream of Ireland. Passing as I did 
in the first days of March, the oranges were in flower 
and ripening in the valleys. All by the stream was 



174 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

a rich garden opening out into the flatlands of the 
wheat area of the San Joaquim Valley to the south, 
and of the Sacramento Valley to the north. 

Travelling due north from Salt Lake one crosses 
the margin of the great inland basin into that of the 
Pacific-opening basin of the Columbia River. By a 
slight deflection to the east one would reach the 
famous preserve of American wild animals called 
Yellowstone Park. This is a large, high area, with 
noted rushing geysers, owned by the Federal Govern- 
ment, in the north-west corner of Wyoming. Here 
is found the primitive undisturbed America of the 
centuries past. 

Due east of Salt Lake is the dividing line of 
Wyoming and Colorado. In Wyoming are deserts, 
grazing-lands, mountains, rivers, and plains. 

Colorado has its own opening to the great, wild 
region south-east of the inland basin of the land- 
locked rivers of Utah and Nevada. The railway 
thither skirts the Rocky Mountains to the east in a 
day's journey due south from Denver. Then it 
deflects by the Santa Fe route through New Mexico 
beyond the deserts which surround the San Francisco 
mountains. By a side line is reached the Grand 
Canyon of the Colorado River from the south. 
Canyons in the rest of America are mostly reached 
from below. Here, however, in Arizona, one journeys 
along the comparatively flat tablelands of the desert 



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT EMPIRE 175 

and suddenly discovers a drop of from five thousand 
to seven thousand feet with myriads of vari-coloured 
pinnacles and what seems like a little tapering rivulet 
in the bottom of the abyss. 

Three or five miles across are the opposite banks, 
so to speak, of the gulf of atmosphere between. This 
mile-deep cutting extends for over two hundred miles. 
There are also a few cracks in which one can make 
the descent down to the dangerous red water of the 
current. In any case it takes a long day's toil to do 
so, but for practical purposes the gulf between the 
banks is impassable. No one ever descends or crosses 
except for the purposes of scientific exploration or 
sportive adventure. 

The reason for all this wonderful vertical rock- 
architecture of the water cuttings in desert lands is 
that western America is mostly a mountain-crested 
plateau of altitudes of from 4000 to 8000 feet above 
the sea. Rain is rare except on the higher northern 
heights. When the rain does fall there is often a 
sudden downpour. Moderate rain, where there is 
vegetation and attracting forest, gently finds its way 
to the plains. Only with a cloudburst are these sudden 
black torrents so packed with battling logs and stones 
that no living being, if caught, can escape alive. 

But in by far the larger portions of the West there 
is no vegetation whose roots and verdure retain the 
rain. It is just simply a tredess wilderness. 



176 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

The rainfall cuts here with scientific accuracy. 
Each sudden rivulet cuts vertically into the rocky 
ground. On every side new rivulets cut their way 
in like manner. Out of ten thousand minor cuttings 
the vertical passage-way below is formed, according 
to the distance of each one's mathematical measure- 
ment from each. The rain-rush marks the scope of 
its intakes in arroyos, or chines, and canyons, cut in 
perfect proportional depth and width. The supreme 
instance of the cutting process is this Grand Arizona 
canyon, whose waters of the Colorado River have sawn 
down the entire sediment cover of the world, expos- 
ing the earth's geology in many-coloured beds, reach- 
ing down to the primitive igneous granite. All the 
sedimentary layers being horizontal, the rock-sculp- 
ture effect is in a perfect design. The harder rocks 
are like great pedestals, and the squared headings of 
Greek temples. The softer limestone rocks are cut in 
angles like roofs, descending according to the degree 
of their texture from hard headings above. On the 
top are many a narrowing tower or butte, looking like 
the belfry of Bruges, or may be pointed like a church 
steeple. Wherever also in all the arid regions the 
flanks of the rocks fall down to the plains, the harder 
sediment rocks lie horizontally like huge bricks with 
retreating perfectly-shaped deflections above and ad 
vancing deflections towards the onlooker below. All 
irregularities are swept off by the sandy winds. 



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT EMPIRE 177 

In all the desert region some square-capped blocks 
of rock are visible with various degrees of perfect 
slopings of the softer rocks commingled. Geologists 
are amazed and puzzled over the origin of the vertical 
enormity of the one supreme canyon, but on the 
whole it seems to be but an arithmetical multiple of 
a formation which one can watch now in the process 
of development the moment a torrent of rain descends 
in any portion of the world-surface unprotected by 
grass or the roots of trees. Thus in general the huge 
plateau being protected to the west by the Sierras, to 
the east by the Rockies, all its openings converge to 
the south in this canyon of Arizona. 

By mere process of addition the thousands or 
millions of smaller cuttings reach down into their 
great sum of the Arizona world-cut, the same rain- 
drops that made the lesser gullies uniting at last to 
make the greater. One watches here the outgoings 
of the cloudbursts of the hundred-leagued plateau 
of the arid portion of America. Probably, how- 
ever, the enormity of this cutting must have been 
effected in some days of deluges unknown to the 
present. 

The Santa Fe Line runs throughout the entire 
territory from Chicago to Los Angeles and San 
Francisco. It crosses the Colorado River at the 
Needles. These are two abutting sharp rocks where 
the canyon comes to an end on veering southwards. 

M 



178 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

Before arriving thither after southing the great high 
mountains of San Francisco, one can deflect due 
south down a long fertile valley in the State of 
Arizona called Phoenix. This is the hottest settle- 
ment in the whole of the United States. Southwards 
again is Tucson, on the Southern Pacific, on the 
way to Yuma. There are wild, flat, yellow-ochre 
deserts here, filled with giant cacti. The cacti flowers, 
on the tips of the leaves, are greater than peonies. 
Many of them fill all the vistas in the shape of 
Corinthian columns and about twenty or thirty feet 
in height. One is never beyond the view of model, 
miniature, sharp-cut mountains, rising, as in Utah, 
abruptly from the plains, treeless and waterless. The 
region of the columnar cacti is near the Mexican 
border. 

The surrounding desert-world is beautifully de- 
scribed by John C. Van Dyke in his book on the 
desert. In this region are found wilds and expanses 
that only the hardiest small party of men would care 
to adventure upon. 

As the Southern Pacific Railway leaves the west 
towards New Mexico, many of the bright colours of 
the 'painted desert' subside. There are no more cacti, 
but just winding arroyos without trees. There are 
great desert flats, filled with miniature dust-cyclones 
and mirages of lakes. Towards the Texan border one 
passes into an impassive and illimitable flat barren 



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT EMPIRE 179 

wilderness. There was no blade of grass when I 
passed that way towards Dalhart. 

Dalhart was a little wood-built town, probably kept 
alive by ranching on the buffalo grass which was not 
at that time of the year in evidence. The neighbour- 
hood to the south-east is called the Staked Plain. 
In the early days this region was so monotonous, 
and so devoid of the least landmark, that the trails 
had to be marked with stakes. A good way to the 
south-east the desert universe terminates and one 
re-enters the rich ranche lands of the giant State of 
Texas, which once was an independent republic, and 
is now the primus in size of all the States of the 
Union. 



i8o THE LAND OF PROMISE 



CHAPTER X 

SAN FRANCISCO 

Rumour once had it that to the west of the coast of 
Mexico there lay the Island of the Amazons, arrayed 
in fabulous wealth. 

The Conquistador of Mexico, on one of his out- 
bound journeys, being fired over reading the Spanish 
legend of Queen Califia and her Amazons, accord- 
ingly built ship on the Pacific slopes and sailed the 
sunset way, to make the acquaintance of a rival 
worthy of his prowess. 

He found in what he took to be an island the 
harbour of La Paz, but no Queen ; only squalid 
Indians. However, he named it after her memory, 
still thinking it to be an island. 

In maps for part of the next two centuries the 
Californias, Baja or Lower, a long peninsula, now 
of Mexico, and Alta or Higher, now of the United 
States, are given as an island. 

On the east of the peninsula opposite Mexico there 
is a tableland above a gaunt steep coast rising to 
mountains of over 6000 feet, intercepting the only 



SAN FRANCISCO i8i 

moisture of Baja California. The land slopes towards 
the western ocean, but is mostly barren rockiness and 
sand. Between the steep east coast and Mexico there 
is a narrow gulf of the sea with unearthly currents 
and hurricanes, held to the left by the immense island 
rock of the Angel de la Guarda, more rock-set and 
treacherous as you ascend, till you enter at length 
the sanded and salted estuary of Colorado River, a 
few miles from Yuma in the United States. 

The first Spanish settlement had to be provisioned 
from Mexico, until a mission of that great religious 
Chartered Company of the times, the Jesuit Order, 
was sent there. As pioneering American irrigation 
organisers, the Jesuits soon had crops of their own 
and began to export to Mexico instead of importing. 

The peninsula was colonised by about a dozen 
such missions named after saints, as Santa Catalina, 
Santa Clara, Santa Rosalia, San Ignatio, San Tomas, 
Santa Genoveva. Thus this other extreme of North 
America was an astonishing parallel not without 
contrasts to the later Theocracy of the north-east of 
Massachusetts. The vicissitudes in the European 
storm-centre of a centralised church ended in the 
replacing of the Jesuits with Franciscans, whose 
adobe churches are the most famed remains of a past 
civilisation in the Upper California of to-day. But 
the land that Cortez conquered has long since re- 
lapsed into desert, tenanted by miserable Indians and 



i82 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

by a few Americans with uncertain grants of land. 
Their desolation is guarded by the solemn saintly 
place-names — the eternal memorial of a bygone 
Theocratic faith which, nevertheless, had helped to 
shape so much the destiny of the Western World. 

Some square miles of the extreme north are touched 
by the American irrigation about Yuma. Near there, 
beyond the Mexican border, is the scene of the swift 
silting up by the sand-laden river of the irrigation 
channels, causing various cataclysms in the neigh- 
bouring regions. The waters lapped over the im- 
mense salty depression in the Salton Desert, below 
sea-level, as a fairy stranger visiting the rainless land 
under a never-tainted blue of heaven with luscious 
waters that formed a magic lake. 

On the Pacific coast, ascending northwards, where 
the arid buttes of Mexican canyons and valleys are 
passed, is San Diego, the supreme health resort of 
the land of flowers and of perpetual spring. The 
narrow valley of the Santa Anna inland is richly 
cultivated. On the plains above is the many-miled, 
palm-groved Los Angeles, or in full, II Pueblo de 
Los Angeles. In the highlands to the north-east are 
several fair-viewed garden cities reached by electric 
railways. The gem of these is Pasadena, and all are 
crowned by the weird, contrasting, treeless mountains 
over 5000 feet above sea-level. Where the mountains 
end all is as flat as a sea, and on the stately surfaces 



SAN FRANCISCO 183 

is the supreme fruit garden of America. Coast-wise 
along the flat lands from Los Angeles is San Pedro 
with its great new harbour protected by breakwaters 
of granite. Above, through orange, lemon, and citron 
plantations, is many-groved Santa Barbara, where the 
coast sweeps off to the west. 

Many points of the coast are famous on account of 
their dark days, recalled in Dana's Before the Mast. 
The islands opposite such as Santa Catalina and 
Santa Cruz are cut off by a very ancient gulf and all 
their flowers are strange. 

The train winds between steep barren mountains 
and the Pacific waters, out of the midst of which I 
saw the derricks of the California oil-fields. 

The mountains are a tremendous fold of sediment 
rocks pressed out to the outmost tip of the land by 
the weight of the gigantic granite Sierra Madres of 
the hinterland. Between the coast mountains and 
the region of the sovereign trees of the world in the 
Sierra's portals to the east, is the southern portion of 
one of the longest, fairest, richest valleys in the 
world, fed by the waters that meet from north to 
south in San Francisco Bay. Once in springtime 
this too was flower land with the music of innumer- 
able bees, but now it is wheat land or fruit land of 
the settlers. Some way up I saw the Sierras, snow- 
white, like enormous animals' teeth, jutting out of the 
lower forested hills. Opening from the long valley 



i84 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

beyond the green foot-hills, towards the Sierras, 
are the chief California canyons, including the 
American, overlooked by the descending continental 
train, and the clear-cut wonderland of the Yosemite. 
On the highlands without, and northwards, are the 
deserted scenes eternalised by Bret Harte. The 
granite range culminates southwards in Mount 
Whitney, 15,000 feet, and its peaks were ascended 
first for the California survey by Clarence King and 
John Muir, the Scot. Behind are rainless deserts 
and lakes without an exit, fed from the Nevadas. 
South is the monstrous lower watch -dog of the 
Sierras, the San Bernardino Range, peering towards 
sea and desert without that ring of the granite thrown 
up from the central force. It is the highest of all the 
outer folding of the world-crack of the Cordilleras ; 
and on passing by one rainy afternoon I saw its head 
peak lifted above the clouds of the lower world. 

Guarding to the extreme north at the other end of 
the hundred-leagued Sacramento and San Joaquim 
Valleys, moved alarmingly from the line of the 
Sierras, is the portentous glaciered volcanic Shasta, 
piled abruptly from the valley head, fair shaped and 
over 14,000 feet in height. 

Along a thousand miles of this coast the equable 
Pacific gives a never hot and never cold ten miles 
belt of land. But fifty miles within there may be 
intense heat, as at Sacramento. At the end of the 



SAN FRANCISCO 185 

United States by Tacoma and Seattle begin the great 
deep sounds of the sea, which continue on and off 
unto the regions where glaciers, greater than the 
Alps can show, crash betimes into the northern 
waters of the Pacific after their long slow sleepy 
snail-like glide from Mount Fairweather and Mount 
St. Elias. The Klondyke region is nearly three 
hundred miles due north of Mount St. Elias. 

Commercial capital of all this two thousand miles 
of coast, and of the eastern waters of the greatest 
world-ocean, San Francisco bids fair to be the New 
York of the Pacific world. For it pours out the 
produce of the wealthy Sacramento Valley to all the 
continents around the Pacific Ocean, and to the islands 
great and small that arise from its long blue waters. 

Crowning, like Rome, a proud rim of hills, girdled 
with waters on every side but one, opening its 
vistas from its hill tops down the bay to San Jose 
on the south-east, and to the Fallarones on the 
Pacific horizon westwards towards Hawaii ; tipped 
with peaks to the south-west as you ascend up 
Market Street from the Ferry ; treeless but for the 
great arboreal emporium of Golden Gate Park touch- 
ing the ocean beach, where are bungalows and misty 
sands ; rayed across the waters with garden cities 
like San Rafael at the foot of a table mountain, 
and Oakland and Alameda, beyond which is the peak 
of Mount Diablo, — San Francisco is in the lap of all 



i86 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

the fortunes, from the gold of the mountain slopes, 
from the cornucopia of the Sacramento Valley, and 
from all that the Far East on the opposite ocean 
shores can gather for its adornment. 

As San Francisco is to the west of inland waters, 
nearly a hundred miles in length, you approach the 
city usually from the east, by crossing over the water, 
as though it were to an island off the western coast 
of California. 

The landing-station at the Ferry is on the eastern 
edge of a long tongue of land, a sort of peninsula, 
six miles wide, reaching down towards San Matteo 
and the south, and ending two miles to the north, 
where the deep waters of the Golden Gate separate 
San Francisco from the table mountain called 
Tamalpais. 

Market Street, headed by a big tower at the 
Ferry, goes south-westward. Other towers of nearly 
twenty stories marked the sites chiefly of the great 
newspapers. Market Street, with all the business 
blocks, gradually mounts upwards to the foot of 
the three hills, about 700 feet high, more than half 
way between the shores of the bay, and the parallel 
shores of the Pacific Ocean to the west. 

At first all the streets ran nearly parallel to 
Market Street. There were good shops and hotels 
to the right. Palace Hotel was higher up to the 
left. China Town was a few hundred paces or so 



SAN FRANCISCO 187 

to the right. Above China Town rose Nob Hill, 
crowned with an enormous stone edifice, and resi- 
dences of some of the older families of San Francisco. 

The Market Street higher up begins to cut a new 
series of streets on the right side, at angles of 45 
degrees. These are joined by others at a similar 
angle, deflecting away at 45 degrees at the same 
side. These side streets open to all the lumpy sand- 
hills of San Francisco. 

Cable and electric cars, diverting at almost every 
deflecting street on the right, went in a switchback 
course up and down the city in immense bounds 
until the wide area of the new dwellings was reached 
on the flat sandy levels beyond. 

The Golden Gate Park here begins to the left and 
slopes off to the streets on the ocean beach. The 
cable cars were very jerky ; the cables gave out a 
rolling sound all the day, and far into the night. 
At about 2 a.m. they would suddenly subside with 
a sound like a dying groan. 

The hills are capped with small parks, laid out 
with the only trees within the limits of San Fran- 
cisco, and opening to prospects of the Bay. One 
hill above Devisadero Street, well to the back, is 
higher than all the rest, and has a correspondingly 
commanding view of the ocean and California. On 
another hill to the north-west are the remains of the 
old Spanish fort, called the Presidio. Here is now 



i88 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

the site of the United States military headquarters 
for the Pacific Coast. 

The Golden Gate Park is a superb epitome of all 
the arboreum of California. There are giant red- 
woods over a thousand years old in the new Federal 
reserve, just given by a generous Chicago citizen to 
the United States, on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais. 
But the coast from Mexico to the limits of Men- 
docino County, the chief site of the redwood forests 
to the north, is for the most part treeless. On the 
contrary, by the mountain slopes of the Sierras, and 
in northern California, are many noble trees and 
shrubs all represented here in the Golden Gate Park. 
There are transplantations too from Mexico in this 
Kew Gardens of the Pacific Coast. Among the 
paths and roads of this artificial wood-world is 
the noted speedway, filled on Sunday with an end- 
less chain of trotters, and racers, and sulkies. 

The chief residential streets are reached at deflect- 
ing angles from the Market Street. They cut across 
from thence through old California Street, to the 
water edge of the Golden Gate. Among these is 
the great Van der Ness Avenue, where General 
Funston, the captor of Aguinaldo, stopped the 
raging of the fire by dynamiting the houses on 
the east, until the street was far too wide for any 
flames to leap across. 

The great fire, early in 1906, devastated both sides 



SAN FRANCISCO 189 

of Market Street ; on the south, sweeping all the 
flat area above the docks ; on the north, flaming up 
the slopes of Nob Hill, and obliterating China Town, 
and the business sections below. It raged then up 
the city, entering the margin of the chief residential 
section until checked by the drastic measures above 
mentioned. 

The Golden Gate Park was fortunately at hand to 
harbour more than one hundred thousand campers ; 
and as the weather in March and April is as warm 
as it is in June in England, no great hardships were 
felt from snow or frost. 

A superbly rising new city recently gladdened the 
eyes of Admiral Evans and his sailors. A great 
cathedral is to take the place of St. Luke's Church. 
I trust that the public buildings like the city hall will 
be re-built of the granite of the Sierras, and not of 
the wretched stucco out of which the old city hall 
had been formerly built at a cost of a million pounds. 

It is of interest to note that the rebuilding of the 
city has been retarded by the heavy new rates of the 
fire insurance imposed by the Insurance Companies, 
for their self-protection. The city has responded 
by a water-works system, with a fall of 700 feet, 
which is intended to be impervious to earthquakes. 
The supply of water being guaranteed also by a 
duplication of the pipings, no further danger of a 
conflagration of all the city may be apprehended. 



I90 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

To a world-wandering investigator of the souls of 
cities far and near, San Francisco would offer as 
fascinating a revelation of the eternities in temporal 
changings as the flora and fauna of the Amazonian 
forests of South America offered to Darwin, the 
observer of cosmic destinies. The ' soul,' in a sense 
the 'religion,' of San Francisco, is really nursed 
into being by the one leading passion of the city. 
This is the passion, or an impassioned desire, for 
freedom from the cranks, idealists, Utopians, puritan- 
isms, civisms, ethical cultures of all the other 
American cities and states, and from those of all 
other nations, tribes, tongues and peoples of the 
world. The San Franciscan deliberately chooses 
to be a Nihilist against the soul-burdening creeds 
and pessimisms of the rest of the world. He 
would rather have non-existence than the strait- 
laced existence dear to the outside reformer, the 
crank, the puritan, the pessimist and the propa- 
gandist. The effect of this self-unburdening from 
the rest of the world's soul weights is an immediate 
and joyous spontaneity, irresponsibility, an invin- 
cible belief that all will be well in the end on the 
simple allowance of the Fact of Things. From 
such faith come the irrepressible high spirits and 
gfood - heartedness that attend this liberation from 
world-care. The much-vaunted corruption in San 
Francisco, which is now the occasion of joke in 



SAN FRANCISCO 191 

all its public schools, is a cost that a free-hearted 
and high-spirited people deliberately choose to pay, 
rather than crankily shut down the evildoers, who 
of course would rush to the front in any spot of the 
world where such a religion of free-hearted ness thus 
gave them the rope. The San Franciscans have 
expressed themselves in sudden moves of Vigilance 
Committees as an impulsive people would be ex- 
pected to do. But it always happened that when- 
ever the hangings and obliterations of the wicked 
had taken place, the city in a moment was an irre- 
pressible optimist again. So it will ever be, even 
if the ring of civic felons, the so-called ^ trade 
union leaders,' is, on the present occasion, seriously 
brought to book. 

San Francisco then is a serious attempt to live that 
irrepressibly individualistic civic life which Herbert 
Spencer thought was the goal of civic conditions. 

It was the San Franciscan conception of a care- 
free world, that the one world-seer of the Western 
States, Henry George, attempted to make scientific 
in his Taxing Scheme for freeing humanity from the 
incubus of the monopoly over the bread-winners' 
* place to work in.' 

This indelibly-stamped characteristic of the soul of 
San Francisco is as easily to be accounted for as are 
distinctive marks of the soul of New England. The 
Puritans started a commonwealth in infinite rigour 



192 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

and exclusiveness, narrowness, hedged about with 
laws, Bible-precepts, police-pastors, life-scrutinies. 
The San Franciscan was moulded in the equally 
religious passion of a contrasting trust in human 
geniality and of faith in earth's wealth and nature's 
cornucopia. Gold dust, ages ago, trickled out of 
the worn-down fissures adjoining the high porphyry 
dykes of the Sierras into ancient placers. From 
thence without law, custom, creed, pastor, or police 
the earth-free man gathered the precious dust and 
adorned a city in which he and his descendants 
might be comfortable for ever. To his gold treasure- 
house, with no claim to ideality, human or divine, the 
San Franciscan cynically watched all the idealities 
of the world flock and render service. Because there 
was gold dust, the uttermost horizon bloomed in 
fields and flowering fruit-trees ; fleets flocked in with 
produce from east and west ; thousand-leagued rail- 
roads were built across the deserts and sierras. 
Society was evoked into being ; governments, 
charters, constitutions, laws, authorities fell into line ; 
education arose ; poets sang, literary chap-books 
were circulated ; churches were built, preachers and 
pastors arrived. The San Franciscan received this 
civic cosmos with open arms. The crowds of devout 
worshippers I have seen flocking into the churches 
are every whit at home in this civic faith of a common 
ecclesia. There are great fashionable congregations. 



SAN FRANCISCO 193 

preachers, teachers, great educational institutions 
hard by. Yet not one of them has had an atom 
of effect on the real religion of San Francisco. The 
soul and spirit of its life-experience assimilated to 
itself all that came to it. Its genius is at home with 
all religions in the same unuttered good-heartedness 
with which it spends its life. There is but one test- 
condition, accepting which they are all free, refusing 
which they are all frowned upon. That is they must 
not disturb the irrepressible good spirits, the geniality, 
the whole-heartedness of the tradition, the religion 
of religions of the place. This they never have in 
any sense attempted to do. 

San Francisco, then, is in a sense like a huge 
irresponsible and irrepressible playful nursery. Its 
men and women are eternally children who do not 
play to live, but who live to play with life. The 
civic evildoers understood what the outer world 
knew nothing about, namely, that they could protect 
themselves behind San Francisco's civic faith and 
likings by making out that if civic puritanism came, 
the heart, the soul of the people would have to be 
taken away. If one of the frightfullest earthquakes 
which have ever visited a city left the fortuneless 
population as much playful children as ever, what 
chance have a few scoundrels of altering the mood 
of the city by their misdeeds, who, in the worst of 
their devastations, can scarcely claim to rival the 

N 



194 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

terrors and ruins wrought by the shaking of the 
earth-god ? 

The truth is that San Francisco is a city which 
owns a better ideal of life than it owns an interpreter 
of its ideals. The San Franciscan is religiously gay- 
hearted when city blocks are tumbling on his head, 
and his fortunes are blown as the smoke is scattered 
in the 'on-shore' breezes from the Pacific Ocean. 
If gold were God, this imperturbability would have 
been an inconceivability. If the city were at heart 
corrupt and sensual, there would not have been the 
unanimous heroism during the earthquake gloom. 
Its churches may mean much to the individual, but 
they have neither founded, nor can they annul, this 
permanent religion of San Francisco, nor lead in 
interpreting the city's life. The Catholic finds the 
city more congenial to him than the Protestant. 
This is on account of the severe compartmental 
separation of the Church of Rome in America from 
civics and politics. Catholicism is of one mind with 
San Francisco in tabooing the crank or puritan or 
religious idealist. But this means the customary with- 
drawal of Catholics from interest in civic amelioration. 
Catholics fill their churches by tens of thousands. 
The great Jesuit stucco church before the earthquake 
days used to be crowded to the doors for most of the 
Sunday services. Yet not a vote in the city govern- 
ment has seemingly ever been altered for better con- 



SAN FRANCISCO 195 

ditions, on this account, since the founding of the 
city ; and the reason is that to do so might seem 
to favour the common enemy, hypocrisy, cant, 
Puritanism, and hated unctuous rectitude. 

As to the Anglo-American and Puritan churches, 
the San Franciscan, when he attends, interprets 
them unconsciously out of his own experiences. They 
are a tonic to his spirits. As interpretations they 
are without a message, or not one that has the least 
chance of reaching from the gatherings of the pious 
to the masses in city wards who use the ballot-box. 
The San Franciscan thinks Henry George was a true 
San Franciscan in the goal he set to his political 
economy theories, of throwing the burden of re- 
sponsibilities from man to a rightly approached and 
becozened Nature. But he is not one with him in 
the mood of anxious boredom in which this reforming 
economist would have all men reshuffle the world's 
order Single Tax-wise. 

Fair things are reported to the account of the 
present Mayor Taylor, a poet with some true Words- 
worthian sentiment, as well as a civic patriot. Yet 
for a lasting reform of San Francisco's municipal life 
would perhaps be required a chief who should be all 
at once a lover of the freedoms like Henry George, 
a populariser of abstractions like William J. Bryan, 
and business-headed like President Roosevelt, and 
an all-round humourist too. 



196 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

Whether a Jacopone da Todi, or even the Umbrian 
high-spirited namesake of the city, would be favour- 
ably received in San Francisco I cannot venture to 
say. Probably some * Roosevelt character, ' perchance 
born in San Francisco, and without any of the 
mannerisms which the too literal education of the 
Eastern States impresses on its pupils, might play 
the Savonarola to this somewhat wayward and wanton 
Florence of the Western World. Such a paragon 
would have to enter heart and soul in all the irre- 
sponsibility, high spirits, good-heartedness of the 
San Franciscans. He would have to interpret their 
ideal into a civic policy and corporate life worthy of 
the same. To make the civic sweeping as permanent 
as the grafting propensities of the Rueffs of all ages 
and climes is perhaps another affair, but this too 
could conceivably be organised into being, granted 
that the voice of such a paragon of a civic leader 
were ever raised in San Francisco's commercial 
blocks and streets. 



CIVIC RELIGION 197 



CHAPTER XI 

NEW ENGLAND AND THE AMERICAN CIVIC RELIGION 

From Colorado, whither I returned from the Pacific 
Coast via Southern California, Yuma, and El Paso, 
I made entry into that Site of Dreams, New England, 
through the Burlington Railroad, passing by the 
cattle-fair city of Omaha, the world-mart of Chicago, 
and thence running by the Lake Shore Railroad to 
Buffalo in the Boston express. 

The prospects laid in geometric vistas of the 
prairies, plains, and butted ranges of Western 
America had passed away as I looked out on the 
graceful Mohawk Valley in red-set green repose of 
autumn. The River Hudson was crossed. The 
brown and green-leaved Berkshire Hills, amid which 
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, were descended and the 
valley of the Connecticut River was reached in sight 
of the abrupt miniature mountain named Long Tom 
at Springfield. 

The country was reminiscent of the ascent of the 
south bank of the Thames above Staines by Egham 
and Virginia Water. The Connecticut Valley is one 



198 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

long parkland with recurring towns upon the green, 
which spread out in view from every point of vantage. 

I arrived here towards the end of the ever-bright 
American fall of the year. Red transparencies were 
glowing all through the green. The waters of the 
grass-banked Connecticut were placid, and mirrored 
the rich beauties of houses, bridges and trees. Church 
steeples showed above the trees, and carts laden with 
cider apples were upon the country roadways. There 
were old Massachusetts villages with houses gene- 
rously interspaced upon the hedgeless village green. 

Comfortable electric cars ran in from all the villages 
and towns hard by to the capital of Western Massa- 
chusetts, Springfield. This city has about 62,000 
inhabitants, and is built half on the lowlands of the 
river, and the rest on ascending slopes to the east. 
The cars converge in High Street, forming a con- 
tinuous train of many colours and shapes. There 
were the big expresses to Hartford and to Worcester, 
and the little local cars to the suburbs and little 
neighbour-villages. 

The United States Government Arsenal for the 
making of the famous Springfield rifles was on the 
summit of the slope, and there were also large 
factories to the north and by the river banks. There 
was the stately Unitarian church where the Te Deum 
was sung ; the Roman Catholic cathedral ; the Anglo- 
American church, served by a brother of the late 



CIVIC RELIGION 199 

Bishop Phillips Brooks ; St. Peter's, with a Catholic 
ritual, upon the hill ; and to the right the Old 
South Congregational church of historic fame, whose 
pastor was the Liberal-Orthodox preacher, Dr. Philip 
S. Moxom. 

It was a prosperous, open, restful, well-tree'd, well- 
housed city. There was a large working population 
of Italian Catholics, a free library valuable for re- 
search, and as good as the best of subscription 
libraries elsewhere, and a notable museum of art, 
with tutorial officials affably ready at all times to 
make the people wise in beautiful things. I had 
entered a realm of a reposeful, reserved civilisation 
of notable contrast to the unfinished rushfulness 
of the West. There was a self-contained, homo- 
geneous society, shrewd, nervous, pale-faced and 
cultured ; but much less open to all comers than the 
society of the Western World. 

Here, however, a great series of customs, traditions, 
educational and religious institutions in Western 
America began to reveal their nursing-home and 
place of origin. The foundations of Greater America 
are really to be found in the township units of the 
lesser First America of the New England States. 
The Pilgrims brought with them to their Plymouth 
settlement the summed-up best of all municipal and 
chartered independence to be got in the most favoured 
cities of Holland and England. Municipal govern- 



2CX) THE LAND OF PROMISE 

ment in friendly expansion or defiance, soon devolved 
upon all neighbouring centres of population, at 
Rhode Island and Connecticut. 

The New England heroes of the War of Indepen- 
dence had all been trained in the unit independencies 
of New England townships. America was really 
scientifically developed by the expansion and en- 
largement of the practicalities of municipal demo- 
cracy applied shrewdly from town to State, and from 
separate States, by aid of the townless Virginian 
statesmen, to the Commonwealth. 

All America westwards that I had left is passion- 
ately and religiously devoted to its Educational 
System, which it tenderly regards as the shrine of 
all the Idealism of the nation. 

The free school system of Western and Eastern 
America had its origin here in the New England 
States. In the natural providence of America's 
assignment of school portions to every new township 
settled, the New England system of education, 
aided by Dutch influence, has marched triumphantly 
through all America to the Western sea-board. 

As the educational propagandas spread hence with 
the missionary zest of a religion, one may there- 
fore consider that the characteristic religiousness of 
the schooling of young America comes under the 
aegis of New England. Although I studied school- 
ing in the West, rather than in New England itself, 



CIVIC RELIGION 201 

it is appropriate to make the survey of this religious 
aspect of American schooling from this its central 
shrine. 

American schooling, then, has developed largely 
from New England's religiously-tinged type of train- 
ing in citizenship. The Constitution of the United 
States forbids denominational religious teaching 
in schools, but the truth is that the school system 
of America has a very positive religion of its own, 
and a religion which by the historian must be acknow- 
ledged as the most decisive, constructive rallying- 
centre in the population of the great Commonwealth. 

The foundation of this religiousness, derived from 
the old ideals of Puritan democracy, is the recogni- 
tion of the nation as the greater * socius ' of oneself. 
The * scriptures' on which the religiously -tinged 
educational faith is founded are an idealised history 
of America's creative days. These heroic times yield 
the types of the divine, nation-building piety from the 
patriarchs and prophets of Independence, modelled 
into a communicable form of enthusiasm which can 
be taken in by every young American. There is the 
educational paraphrase of the Call of the Nation, of 
its setting apart in the eternal decrees to vindicate 
the divine rights of the independence of mankind. 
The story of the much-tried chosen people of Israel 
had endeared the first Americans to their Independ- 
ence-Deity, to the God who had called them to 



202 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

America that they might be just, faithful, inde- 
pendent, devout, beneficent, and reign in the world. 
By recalling these origins in the histories taught in 
every public school it is believed that every young 
American will grow into an epitome of all the first 
heroisms. 

Thus the Pilgrims are set down as the new 
Abrahams and the Patriarchs of Israel who left the 
foreign gods and entered the haven of the Promised 
Land, pledged together in their God, in the Mayflower 
Compact, that they might be a holy and priestly 
people unto their true God. 

Though the dream of the Puritan theocracy had 
sunk down during the first hundred years, yet it 
more humanely emerged in Jehovah's champions of 
the Independence War. There follow thence the 
* Books of Judges and of Kings' of the educational 
course, a history of the Constitution in which divine 
and transcendent justice is embodied in a compact 
which is to gather humanity from all lands into one 
free, contented family of children, and wherein social 
justice is to descend to earth from heaven. 

Finally, there is the religious freedom or common 
enjoyment of a providence of God towards America, of 
which the reign of plenty is the sacramental sign. In- 
struction in ethics and civics constitutes the American 
youthful training in the social commandments ; and 
patriotic songs, flags, processions and holidays, and 



CIVIC RELIGION 203 

politeness and friendly demeanour to all the world, 
make up the ceremonial law. These are no mere 
figures of rhetoric. From observation and study 
and reflection my judgment about American educa- 
tion is that it is an instruction in a well-conceived 
patriotism which amounts to every whit as much a 
religion as was the early Hebrew religion of the 
patriotic covenant or the Japanese Shintoic patriotism 
of to-day. 

The ^ development of doctrine,' to adopt Newman's 
phrase, for the growth of the consciousness of what 
is within a Faith, may be summed up thus : — The 
whole round, complete, apostolic depositiivi fidei was 
the original belief in a God-State, or a Theocracy, 
by the Puritan founders of New England. Scientific 
writers have been teaching lately the theory of what 
they call the indestructibility of all faiths incarnate in 
a people. From this way of taking it, it is scientific- 
ally accurate to say that the Puritan belief in God's 
transcendent world-government, which was incarnate 
in the Massachusetts government of a civic state by 
religious leaders in the name of the Puritan religion, 
may be subjected to change, development, alteration, 
modification, secularisation ; but in one form or 
another it is more indestructible than the rivers, 
plains, and mountain ranges which make up the 
American continent. 

It was the equal prosperity of the sister States, in- 



204 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

eluding freedom -loving, therefore reputedly rather 
impious, Rhode Island and Connecticut, which first 
humanised Puritan theocratic ideas. The evidence 
of a fatherly and all-bounteous God began to show 
itself not only in the founding of the Massachusetts 
theocracy, and the safe-conducting of its people of 
the American covenant to prosperity ; but this divine 
epiphany or manifestion in the world was also seen 
all along the vistas of the blessings rained impartially 
from heaven on the settlements around outside the 
covenanted few. 

Even the work of the truly constructive thinker, 
but at the same time missioner of faith in hell-fire, 
Jonathan Edwards, could not withstand the ' develop- 
ment of doctrine,' from faith in a narrow-cornered, 
Israelitic, Puritan Jehovah to faith in a great 
humanity-loving All-Father in heaven. 

This new phase in the mind and heart of the chosen 
ones came to pass soon after the days of the Great 
Awakening of the eighteenth century. This mission- 
ary religious revival effected a permanent but some- 
what unforeseen type of a stable good result. For 
when men had awakened to the trumpet-call of a 
Judgment sermon, religiously, on looking around, 
they began to be aware that nothing was quite the 
same as it had once been. 

I believe that the achievement of the independence 
of America was a result due, more than to anything 



CIVIC RELIGION 205 

else, to the influence of a more humanised theocratic 
Puritan faith ; and that in this sense America, as a 
new nation, was founded as an essentially religious 
theocratic commonwealth. Jeffersonian and French 
ideas, and even the humanism of Thomas Paine, con- 
sorted with narrower New Englandism, though these 
were assimilated, not without a deep religious tinge. 
From the beginning the Constitution has been 
^sacred,' and therefore as unalterable in the main 
to the true believer, as God himself. 

The twenty-times revised French Constitution of 
the nineteenth century, and the constitutional change- 
ability of South America and Mexico, are examples 
of what a constitution is, if it is not in a sense a 
symbol, or a creed, of an eternity-sanctioned religious 
faith. South America does not change its Catholic 
religion, which it considers to be founded on eternity, 
as it does its political constitutions, which it thinks 
to be the outcome of the whims of the changeable 
beings of time. 

' Development of doctrine ' was ushered in, also, 
in the Unitarian Revolt of the 'thirties of the last 
century. The reason for the ineffectuality of Uni- 
tarianism was simply that the development had 
already gone into the people's life, and had taken 
on forms of its own in a spontaneous manner, apart 
even from the wide-open arms of the Unitarian re- 
ligion of culture. Channing, however, and Theodore 



2o6 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

Parker, and William Lloyd Garrison, were true in- 
terpreters of the humane American theocracy. When 
Lincoln attempted to cap the constitutional edifice of 
the United States by crowning the implicit American 
theocracy with that sovereignty which had been in 
abeyance in the days of the State Rights, it was the 
religious sense of the American people which saw 
the God-given need of union, sanctioned by the 
Eternal One, and which inspired men to shed their 
blood on its behalf. 

Now the sacred shrines of this religion are assuredly 
found in every public school in the United States. 
One need not here allude to such a reputed ^ moral 
monster' as in England has been called 'unde- 
nominational religion.' Religion, denominational 
or undenominational, to use the rather self-con- 
demnatory jargon in use, never is^ because it never 
can bCy manufactured. Nor do I mean any phase 
of Protestantism versus Catholicism, nor any phase 
of Catholicism versus Protestantism, or any other 
religion against either Catholicism or Protestantism. 
Some I have known to whom the love of country was 
keyed into that un-handmade passion which is ' re- 
ligion,' who were Catholics of the devoutest Catholic 
flock. Others were Protestants to the uttermost 
degree. Neither is it a religion of negatives, agree- 
ing with all because it affirms no positive faith. The 
national faith of America is about the most positive 



CIVIC RELIGION 207 

faith that I know of. It beHeves in and adores a 
positive God ; it accepts an immutable covenant 
with this God ; it believes in immutable command- 
ments ; and accepts the greater ceremonial of a 
national manner of life ordered by that unseen 
spiritual master of ceremonies, which rules the geni- 
ality of America's social ways. 

Neither is this common religion an uncritical re- 
ligion of up-State farmers and Western enthusiasts, 
and out-of-the-way Methodist communities. It is 
not an uncriticised religion, because it has those 
fiery, higher critics of its Bible, those protagonists of 
the practical gospel of fact, of business, commerce, 
trade, ^success,' whose creed and practice, in nine 
cases out of ten, seemingly obliterate the idealism 
of the teachers of the public schools. Neither is 
this a gospel which is unbattered by criticism of the 
cosmopolitanism of the great world-market dealers 
of American world-life. 

Granted that there was a development of doctrine 
in the old American religious faith in a divine benefi- 
cence to the United States, till the last patriarch of 
America, Abraham Lincoln ; that ensuing Arma- 
geddon of the whirlwind commercialism and indus- 
trialism of the later decades has been hurled with 
its terrific world-weight of material facts upon the 
strongholds of the people's religion. No fiercer 
enemy than this dead-weight of triumphant iron 



2o8 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

and steel and lead and sky-scraping civilisation has 
ever assaulted a national faith. According to a 
school of scientific economists of America, the effect 
of the iron age of industrial civilisation on religion 
has been not to diminish religion, but to render it 
* harmless ' by changing it from a substance into a 
shadow. The economists of this school, such as 
Wallis, of the Chicago University, say in effect : — 

^ The motive of world-history till after the Reforma- 
tion era was theology. The motive of world-history 
since after the Reformation has been economics. 

* Religion in the process has been transmuted from 
a sovereign power to a cultured sentiment. Religion 
is now a mere spiritual holiday. It is an adornment, 
decorating the brutal fact of business with beautiful 
rainbow allegories, which appease restless minds, 
but which have not an atom of real influence on the 
serious sovereign fact of human life, economics. 

* The economic struggle for existence is life : the 
churches are the interludes of life. 

^ '' God " is the summed battalions of the power of 
scientific industry. 

^ What the Churches believe in and worship is a 
revered Idealisation necessary to soothe souls in the 
interludes of the hard economic worship of the one 
true god of the wits and lightnings which controls 
civilisation.' 

The thought which is here summarised may be 



CIVIC RELIGION 209 

said to stand for the animus of the average criticism 
of the traditional religion of America which every 
young man in America is bound on some occasion 
to come across. 

According to this view the denominations and 
creeds and churches of America are spiritual decora- 
tions, the cultivation of time-worn harmless senti- 
ments, spiritual occupations and holiday thoughts, 
mythical illusions, carried by, worn outwardly as 
fine plumes of, the inward serious, iron-hearted, 
economic world-life. 

Existing organised religions are spirit-luxuries or 
pastimes, or soul-amusements, supported, allowed 
by, and even ordered into being by, the authority 
wielded by the business sovereigns of mankind. 

An American in New England who held by this 
view frankly told me that if I wanted to know any- 
thing about serious America, I must shut my mind 
to its religions and sects. He thought, however, that 
church life and practice were as allowable and reason- 
able as sporting life and playgoing. To him religion 
was in effect a spiritual play with, or a game of hide- 
and-seek with, illusory gods who had been placed in 
the empty scene of the heavens by the playwright 
Humanity, to make the world of existence a more 
endurable place. In this way business men, Ameri- 
can sociologists and American economists, all of 
whom willingly support the churches, have dethroned 

Q 



2IO THE LAND OF PROMISE 

religion from the realm of hard cosmic fact and 
appointed it a province of mental decoration or 
culture, chained to the God of power, stone, steel, 
sky-scrapers and trans - continental railroads. As 
Joseph once stored the staff of the life of nations in 
his granaries, so the Rockefellers store up potential 
seminaries, pastorates, theologies, churches, divine 
worshippings in their banking accounts. All these 
are ready to be ordered forth into being according to 
the moods of after-dinner goodwill of the chief 
provider. It is evident that with religion as one of 
the sovereign decorations of monetary power, the 
apostle of agnosticism, or of unfaith, would have first 
of all to wreck the capitalist fabric of the United States 
before he could be tolerated in social America. The 
late Robert Ingersoll was good-humouredly tolerated 
in America. A Huxley, in his more serious militant 
propaganda against religious faiths, would not readily 
even find an audience. 

The onlooker must see here one of the most inter- 
esting situations in the history of religion in any 
country. One may recall how the military autocracy 
of the noted imperial conqueror Aurelian attempted 
to support and foster the Roman ascendency by 
appropriating from the conquered East the glory and 
decoration of its worship of the Sun. One may re- 
member, too, Dante's lament over the gift of Con- 
Stantine to Peter which, to the mind of the Florentine 



CIVIC RELIGION 211 

had subordinated divine interests to the concerns of 
the temporal power of the Papacy. But those who, 
with the late Sir John Seeley, believe that religion is 
the chief of constructive energies of a nation may 
take heart also at the thought that this new attitude 
of the wealthy and the learned towards religion in 
America is an evidence and a testimony that, in the 
progressive countries of the world, the intellectual 
assault on religion of the last two centuries has failed 
once and for all. Where the public schools of 
America continue to teach a religion of moral in- 
tegrity of life for the * greater comrade,' mankind, 
under the supreme sanction of a transcendent God, 
the commercialism and industrial individualism and 
business selfishness of the age have been forced to 
acknowledge the indestructible strength of this tra- 
ditional religion of America, as is shown in their 
attempts to patronise it and to shape its influence 
into agreement with their own ideals. 

The new developments and triumphs of American 
religion naturally take their rise as counter-attacks 
upon this spirit of commercialism, which has attempted 
to dethrone religion from sovereignty though not to 
deny its truth. Before recording the consolidating 
effects of the new awakening of the national con- 
science of America, it will be helpful if I try to 
describe certain particular attitudes of mind in which 
American thinkers are wont to contemplate the deeper 



212 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

problems of life. There are also phases of the mental 
life of the typical American which are so distinct from 
any phase of the mental life of any other people that 
it is essential to bear them in mind here. 

I purpose to follow this sketch of phases of the 
American mind in its leading thinkers, as well as in 
a common and universal attitude which belongs to 
the people as a whole, by recording some of the 
main features in this modern religious awakening of 
America. If the civic ' mission ' for the purposes of a 

* social conversion ' to which I shall allude is a great 
success, in a sense the America of the future may 
be expected to become, or rather to remain, the most 

* theological community' of the human race. 



AMERICAN THOUGHT 213 



CHAPTER Xn 

THE ORIGINALITY OF AMERICAN THOUGHT 

The humanised puritanic democracy which spread 
from New England is by no means the only type of 
the democracy of America. One reason of its wide 
influence is because for many years the school text- 
books of most public schools were written by New 
England historians. It is generally conceded that 
the famous writers like Bancroft and Fiske saw every- 
thing far too much from the New England point of 
view. The monumental works of more recent and 
living historians, which continue to fill in the history 
market, include some noted Southerners like Wood- 
row Wilson, and others who are free from New 
England bias. The Dutch of New York State 
have contributed much, both in ordering the school 
system and in dividing the land into townships, and 
also in formulating more workable constitutional 
ideas. To New England we may perhaps attribute 
the ineradicable idealism of the United States. Ideal- 
ism has taken on the shape of belief in the infinite 
perfectability of all institutions, persons, and peoples 



214 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

in the country. This visionary idealism causes all 
Americans, as it were, to ' live in the future,' and to 
struggle incessantly for advancement along every 
line of human activity, not forgetting religion, ethics 
and culture. This idealism stamps America as 
pre-eminently the land of vision, the land of great 
promises. Out of the civic imperfections and crudities 
of the present, the American Perfectionist or Idealist 
is in a sense 'justified ' by the abundance of his 
faith in progress into a deserved repute for perfec- 
tions which have not yet been attained to in the 
real world. Without thus 'living in advance,' in a 
forthcoming 'more perfect city,' much of the railway 
civilisation, with all the uglinesses of rails, torn-up 
country, overhead wires, wooden-shanty structures, 
and huge advertisement boards which cover so vast 
an area of the present-day America, would be un- 
endurable. But there is no type of ugliness of the 
cut-up country which has not its idealist opponents. 
There are powerful organisations standing for the 
beauty of cities in all the great centres of population. 
Even the strict commercialists now also recognise 
that, for instance, the Brooklyn end of the Williams- 
burg bridge, by a small saving in its finishing, 
with resultant crudity and ugliness, has depreciated 
property in Williamsburg by tenfold more than by 
the amount that the rejected improvement of the 
opening would have cost. 



AMERICAN THOUGHT 215 

Idealism, then, sprung from whatever origin you 
will, may be put down as a universal note of the 
American mind, and out of the tendencies which are 
its embodiment may be portrayed a picture of a 
future America from the east to west sea-board. We 
doubt not that in this future the ugliness of over- 
head wiring will be concealed underground, the de- 
facing advertisements will be abolished, and the 
building laws will reduce the fabric of towns to an 
order in the architecture, where are now so many 
disproportions and vacant plots held for a rise of 
value in the property market. 

These reflections lead one to the deeper question 
of the more general attitude of the mind of America 
on life and its environment. In a sense America 
thinks objectively in the symbols of cities and rail- 
ways and trade and industry, in place of abstractions 
of the mind. But while these material realities have 
not obscured the more general American outlook on 
the world, they have, at least, advantageously helped 
of late to shape the serious thought of America into 
alignment with the practical values of things and 
the desire for demonstrable results. This tendency 
is called by some ' pragmatism,' the judgment of a 
spiritual truth by its value in real life. Pragmatism 
is not materialistic, whether as propounded by men 
like Professors Dewey and William James, or in its 
more habitual form as the tendency of the entire mind 



2i6 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

of the American people to judge spiritual claims by 
the real results which they chance to show in the 
world. The European agnostic has intellectual preju- 
dices against Christian dogmas. The ' pragmatical,' 
or practical, mind of America says that the inner 
divine truth of the dogmas in question is precisely 
what it effects of itself in mankind. Faith is what 
faith shows itself to render palpable in life. One who 
can teach well may be called a philosopher. One 
who can in effect save the world may be called a 
God ; and our judgment here may be trusted to be 
not far off from the real truth of things. 

Pragmatism, however, is not necessarily and ex- 
clusively American. But there is a point of view in 
the thought of America which is wholly American 
and is worthy therefore here of some consideration. 

This true originality in American thought consists 
in its duplication of the entire thoughts of humanity 
from an American point of view. American thinkers 
have laboriously watched and studied the bearings, 
and in a sense the convergence, of all the world's 
events upon America. To every one the truth of 
history is interpreted by our everyday experience of 
our fellows. America having a larger present and 
everyday experience than most other people, reads 
this experience into past histories, philosophies, 
cultures, with a resultant widening and humanising 
of the point of view. 



AMERICAN THOUGHT 217 

In the intellectual world America is thus slowly- 
achieving an intellectual independence parallel to its 
realisation of independence in the practical world. 
Washington and Jefferson were as dependent upon 
Europe in their manners of thought as they were 
independent of Europe in their manner of practice. 
The Independence Party began in the practical 
manner to live^ but not yet to thinks the world-life 
again de novo. The ideas of the Revolution days 
were of the eighteenth century — English, Dutch, 
and French. But the nation^s practical experiment 
of re-living the world-life alone, led to the gradual 
rethinking of all the problems of humanity, not in 
the English, Dutch, or French manner of thinking, 
but in a purely American method, reconstructive of 
history, society, culture, philosophy and economics. 

The true Plato or world-seer of American experi- 
ence was Emerson. The fact that there is a genuine 
American reconception of the earth and the heavens 
is a point usually missed by European observers, 
because the language-currency of thought, the minor 
setting of word-picturing, may seem identical in the 
old and new continents. 

Reflection and comparison, however, reveal the 
impassable gulf between the American and, say, the 
English mind. Analytical mental processes reveal 
that the American mind has slowly discovered a 
newer world than ever Columbus sailed to find, and 



2i8 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

a freer world, too, than ever Washington gave to 
humanity. 

In England there is a huge, columnar, social 
authority founded on the thought-habits of previous 
centuries. This social authority weighs upon the 
nation with the irresistible momentum of fashion, 
law, custom, and prejudice. On one side this irre- 
sistible authority is expressed in the sacred but un- 
written British Constitution, with varied yet ever- 
sanctioned party interpretations of it. There is the 
authorised Church of England, and the regularised 
religious independencies ; there is the authorised 
fabric of social classification ; there are the authori- 
tative universities. This momentous authority is the 
second self of the Englishman. It is a datum, or an 
axiom, or a foundation -pressure which cannot be 
questioned with impunity except in an academic way. 
But in America onQ has to study society in a serious 
and practical effort to become conscious of one's 
foundings ; for here no such taken-for-granted type 
of authority exists. This study of society aims to give 
the young man of the country a scientific and indis- 
putable reason why he should have a country, a 
society, a conscience, and a God. 

The foundation of American thought is thus the 
conception of the undivided, the undiminished, hence 
the ^individual' man. Why should I obey society? 
Why should I be just? Why should I be conscien- 



AMERICAN THOUGHT 219 

tious ? Why should I be considerate of others ? Why 
should I be religious? Because I cannot be my free 
self without social support. I cannot win others with- 
out being just to them. I cannot hold my sovereign 
self in authority without a conscience. I cannot fulfil 
my higher faculties without adoring God. 

The moral teacher's task is, therefore, to recon- 
stitute, annex, appropriate, assimilate all the crossed 
obediences, shirked duties, replaced ideals, contra- 
dicted religions, authorities, refused sovereignties. 
He must assert moral authority, not because it is 
associated seemingly with some old fable that any 
youth can pick to pieces if he will, but because 
its acceptance is the true scientific adornment of 
oneself, and integral to every true and wholly living 
man. One cannot be a man, cannot own his 
own possessions, and enter upon his sacred world- 
heritage, except he be graced with these graces, 
unless he be adorned with the crown of this social 
glory, unless he is inrayed with society's obediences, 
subjections, duties, ideals, authorities ; unless he is so 
susceptible to social sanctions that society sanctions 
him, crowns him, and invests him, too, with its own 
authority, dignity, might and power. 

America may be studied as a supreme living object- 
lesson in the social world of its makings and its 
undevelopments. Every stage of world-history is 
therein recapitulated in incessant interclashings. In 



220 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

any scientific sense it is untrue to say that corruption 
of society exists in America. For corruption implies 
a pre-existing perfection of development which in 
the real millions of the American population, the 
immigrant world of seventy years, is really non- 
existent. In Tammany Hall's organisation, old terms 
of the Red Indian tribal organisations, such as 
sachem^ are appropriately still in use. For the 
organisation of Tammany has been a mere perpetua- 
tion of the native clan system of Ireland by men who 
never accepted what to them would have seemed the 
indignity of becoming West Britons. This type of 
organisation is simply the primitive, the universally 
human method, in which men club together for self- 
protection under a chief. Tammany is neither moral 
nor immoral. It is a primitive, simple, ethnic, human 
organisation for self-protection, co-operation, mutual 
aid. It accepts the standards of an entirely different 
ethnic type of organisation from those of New 
England, in ordering the instruments and resources 
of its own existence and powers. The organisation of 
parties in every American city and in every American 
State are in like manner simply human, primitive, 
basal, undeveloped. It never had any perfection from 
which to become a corruption. The Columbia pro- 
fessor, the Seth Low, coming on the acme of the 
ethical and social development of a small minority, in 
marked contrast to that of the real population of 



AMERICAN THOUGHT 221 

America, is wont to paint the standing-together of 
the men outside the pale of his own institutions as 
a contradiction to his own ideals of right and 
wrong. Yet if a Columbia professor should enter 
more seriously into the problem and ask why should 
not the Tammany organisation protect itself as well 
as capitalist organisations do : by what sanction can 
he show his own model conceptions of society to 
be authoritative among people who have hitherto 
ignored their existence or who treated them with 
silence and contempt ? The vital and supreme 
problem of America therein begins to formulate 
itself. The sanctions of the ^ kid glove ' dilettantes 
of ethics are not the serious factor in the situation. 
The professor, the leader, the teacher, to become the 
people's seer, must argue solely from the point of 
view of the ^ordinary man.' If his sanctions appeal 
to the ordinary man, his civic doctrine can be taught 
to the children in all the schools, it can be popularised 
in all campaigns, and expounded in all the popular 
press. 

It was because Seth Low failed to see things from 
the point of view of the real world, that after his 
mayoralty in New York he disappeared from Ameri- 
can politics, and Tammany, the * organisation of the 
ordinary man,' re-entered with a more sweeping 
majority than ever. 

By this time some men of affairs like Roosevelt, 



222 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

aided by lieutenants like Jacob Riis and Joseph 
Hodder, had attempted to think out the problem of 
the New America, in a serious attempt to fuse busi- 
ness conceptions with ethics and ideality and a living 
faith in a God. Hitherto, the American had adored 
the successful spectacular self-made plutocrat, glori- 
fied by the business code of ethics, like Carnegie. He 
nourished the thought that he, or one of his, might 
some day win this heaven of golden power ; at least 
he had done his best to conquer too. Therefore he 
could not condemn the men who were doing what he 
himself wished to do. For a plutocrat but embodied 
his own private wishes about himself, in the race in 
which all apparently had entered together without 
any handicap. But the Roosevelt school showed 
that this idea of universal potential greatness was an 
utter fallacy, which the indisputable facts and figures 
on the limitation of national productivity dissolved 
with absolute finality. Land, coal, iron, oil, the 
possible number of routes between two cities, are 
numbered, limited, geometrically curtailed. They 
had already been appropriated, and the American 
millions excluded for ever. The would-be second 
Rockefeller must have a second United States supply 
of rock-oil. For a second Vanderbilt railway to 
succeed, one must invent new Vanderbilt towns like 
New York, Chicago, Philadelphia. The new millions 
were not potential Rockefellers, or Morgans. Their 



AMERICAN THOUGHT 223 

day was severally and by geometrical necessity over 
and done with in an irreversible past. 

The * ordinary man ' could see that without some 
recognition of a sense of fraternity, of social co-opera- 
tion, which far transcended the primitive Red Indian 
clubbing together, and Tammany and Boss politics, 
he was doomed to be the mere sport of men who had 
appropriated the ordinary man's own rightful share 
in the nation's wealth. To the ten, to the hundred, 
to the thousand, business need not be ethical in order 
to be business, — that is, to succeed. But to the million 
the seemingly most unethical, undivine, irreligious, 
godless of all human actualities, the business and 
commercial life, was shut out conclusively, if it were 
not ethical, if it were not in a sense even Christly, 
brotherly, humanised. The many-millioned 'ordinary 
man ' began to see that he must enforce social and 
business ethics, otherwise he would be the eternal 
slave of the mere hundred-folded * ordinary man * 
who was arithmetically or geometrically privileged in 
having first got to the source of American supplies. 

The vital educational influence of the Roosevelt 
campaign throughout its long career, when he was 
successively Chief of the New York Police, Governor 
of the State, Vice-President of the Federal States 
by election, afterwards President by Constitutional 
appointment, and was finally elected President by a 
record majority of two million votes in 1904, shows 



224 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

that he is a world-leader in the cause of the recon- 
ciliation of the vulgar reason of business, trade, and 
commerce with the subtle reason of pure ethics, call 
it, if you will, utilitarian, altruistic, or Christly. 

The President has achieved the educational feat of 
popularising and demonstrating the even self-inter- 
ested necessity for righteous business ethics that 
the people may be free, and prosperous, and ever- 
living. It is to be noted, too, that the ever-increasing 
respect for the people's champion of a former day, 
President Lincoln, is coincident with the more wide- 
spread popular ascertainment of the * commonness* 
of the great hero's jokes and manner of viewing life. 

The mind of the future America on the subject 
of this political and commercial morality is perhaps 
embodied less in the educational institutions of native 
Old America, such as Harvard and Yale, than in 
modern institutions like the Universities of Chicago 
and Michigan, whose influence really touches the 
New America. The University of Michigan especi- 
ally has earned a reputation for moulding the char- 
acters of leaders who have popularised, and are 
popularising, the idea of the substantial identity be- 
tween good business and sound politics. 

The modelling of the future statesmen, men of 
affairs, business men, controllers of industry and 
commerce after the most perfect of ethical and 
practical standards, would certainly be a supreme 



AMERICAN THOUGHT 225 

achievement of the American university system. 
There is little doubt but that some Western univer- 
sities are close enough to the people, and inde- 
pendent enough, to exert such an influence, and that 
many of the political reformers of the present and 
leaders in commercial honesty are the product of 
American college life. On the other hand one of 
the most clear-headed political thinkers in America, 
and one of its best public characters, John Albert 
Johnson, the Democratic Governor of Minnesota, 
knew so little of school or college life, that at 
the age of fifteen, being left without a father's care, 
he was bread-winner to the family, supporting his 
mother and her younger children entirely by his own 
efforts. In a case like this, while college life gave 
him nothing, it is likely that a State university, like 
that of Minnesota, will be a chief of mediums through 
which Governor Johnson's own ideals of civic probity 
and friendliness to the workers are to be carried on- 
wards in the future history of the State. He has 
already, it is said, helped to raise up the government 
of the Minnesota University out of the reach or 
influence of party politics. 

Apart from these educational leaders of the people, 
we may make mention of, as representative of the 
mind of America, certain thinkers and professors, of 
a type I may call the ^ palpablists,' because they 
have been demonstrators of old transcendencies 

p 



226 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

denied by the materialists of theory and practice. 
Their evidences also have taken a palpable form, 
capable, in the long-run, of impressing the mind of 
the ordinary man. I may mention Dr. Simon N. 
Patten of Pennsylvania University, Dr. Lester 
Ward of Brown, Professor James Mark Baldwin of 
Princeton, and Professor William James of Harvard. 
Then there is an equally interesting type of thinker 
who has cast aside the Americanised professorial meta- 
physics of the Schools, such as Professor Jacques 
Loeb, now at Berkeley University, California. All 
these have propounded the demonstrability of the re- 
putedly transcendent, and in this sense have assailed 
Kantian aristocratic agnosticism. Dr. Patten is a 
leading reconciler of economics with ethics. His 
best short work is on the History of English Thought 
in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries^ and it 
deserved more recognition for its originality than it 
has received in England. Dr. Patten grasped the 
truth of the relationship of Puritanism with world- 
economics and world-conquest. The piety of the old 
Puritan home created men with ' mother-thoughts ' : 
men empowered and destined to lead and control 
the nations. The Cavalier, with his gaudy recogni- 
tion of woman's privileges, obstructed and stood in 
the way of her real world-power. The Puritan, by 
protecting the home-creator, ensured the modern 
economic individuality of woman, and provided for 



AMERICAN THOUGHT 227 

a purer conception of life among the younger genera- 
tion. This Puritan protection of the home, and its 
necessary consequences, gave to the younger gener- 
ation the * mother-thoughts ' of that inspiration and 
might to shape the course of world-events, assuring 
for them their future world-supremacy. From these 
shrines of a theocratic piety of home-nurture there 
sprang the heroism of the long line of Hampdens, 
Cromwells, Pilgrim Fathers, and even too of the 
Washingtons, Adamses, Madisons, and other re- 
volutionary heroes. 

A like homely type of faith of the evangelicals 
had inspired and moulded the leaders of the humani- 
tarian conscience of modern England. 

Dr. Lester F. Ward may be called the American 
Herbert Spencer. To the dismay of other sociolo- 
gists, he has included all science within the Science 
of Society. He teaches that the forces which mould 
society are not mere forces that we must bow down to 
and leave to act alone. These evolving forces to him 
are of transcending power indeed, and work of them- 
selves (Social Dynamics and Statics), but they are 
at the same time subject to human interpretation 
(Telesis). The material universe is the continuous 
reserve of force, available as an infinite mine of 
wealth to all who have learned to transform it as 
an instrument of social utility. Materiality is thus 
packed full of spirituality. Economics is the root of 



228 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

Ethics. Ethics is the science of life. Humanity 
must be good to be real. All abstractions exist in 
some real embodiment. It was Dr. Lester Ward 
who made the famous statement, parodied in Punchy 
that Woman was the human race, men being but 
her satellites, and the accidental outgoing foragers, 
fighters and food procurers for the home goddess. 

Professor James Mark Baldwin is perhaps the 
world's leading systematiser of Science, Social and 
Psychological. He is rather more professorial and 
less human and popular than many American pro- 
fessors, but his studies of the child -mind are a 
valuable demonstration of the indestructibility of the 
spiritual and the transcendental in the very nature 
of mental structure. 

Then there is Dr. James, who revolutionised 
Religious Psychology in the Gifford Lectures at 
Edinburgh some few years ago. The scientific world 
was aroused to hear a scientific man resubstantiate 
the actuality of visions, experiences with departed 
spirits, contacts with the divinity, conversions, and 
the entire category of sanctioned religious transforma- 
tions. To him a conversion became as much a real 
* turning over,' as is the permanent turning over of a 
crystal upon a new facet. He girded at the impu- 
dence of the jugglers with vocabularies who include 
a Christ or a Napoleon in the same category with 
miserable epileptics tumbling around the floor of a 



AMERICAN THOUGHT 229 

sickroom. But access to the gods was given back 
to science and right reason at a cost, alas ! some- 
what ruinous to the faith of the devout. Dr. James 
called back indeed the Assisians, the Bunyans, the 
Margaret Mary Alacoques, and saintly voyagers on 
the mystic sea into the comity of those who are not 
deceived in what they report about the marvels they 
have met away from common lands. And if he 
somewhat lowered the height of their claims to be 
privy to the counsels of some Most High, his re- 
conquest of the gods for science is at least a most 
characteristic expression of America's mental inde- 
pendence. 

Dr. Jacques Loeb, a follower of Ernst Mach, who 
was associated once with Professor Albert Matthews 
of the Chicago University, is of another type of the 
* palpablists.' He conceived the idea of reconstructing 
life ah origine^ not, however, in its general sense, but 
detail by detail in a series of physiological experi- 
ments, each one of which represented some missing 
factor of life. When the whole gamut of the living 
factors of an echinus or starfish were run through, 
each in turn having been paralysed or removed, and 
resurrected and restored in turn, a virtual re-creation 
would have been effected, and it would be possible to 
conceive of the evolution of life altogether de novo. 

Some of Dr. Loeb's experiments with lowly organ- 
isms were very beautiful, and were intended to show 



230 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

the automatic origin of life's reflexes. To him the 
moth is attracted to the light automatically and in- 
evitably by the photo-chemical excitement of motor 
power. When the moth gets near the light, the 
motor depression due to the heat tends to divert its 
course. The moth was held in the air as an airship, 
or rather as a planetary satellite, a pure automaton ; 
and yet kept thereby usually within balance. Dr. 
Loeb studied the reanimation of dead frogs, the 
mechanical fertilisation of sea-urchins by salt and 
calcium. Lecturing at the St. Louis Exposition in 
1904, where he presided over the Physiological De- 
partment, Dr. Loeb said that Darwinism had been 
a mere metaphysical speculation until De Vries pro- 
duced a new species of primrose by an actual experi- 
ment in evolution. Elsewhere his favourite maxim 
is that the object of science is no longer to stare at 
nature, but to gain control over all its powers. To 
him, disease, sickness, madness, death, are affairs of 
eliminable poisons, which physiologists will some 
day learn how to eject from the human system. 
While ostensibly a materialist, Loeb allows a 
marvellous spirituality to the mind, much more 
so than do his spiritualist compeers. He also credits 
the human will with powers over the cosmos, of a 
kind which most people have relegated to super- 
naturalism. 
These few instances of thinkers reveal the entirely 



AMERICAN THOUGHT 231 

open, frank, unhampered, practical way in which 
Americans are facing every subject of scientific study. 
They are without the dogmatic or anti-dogmatic pre- 
judices of Europe. They are positivists in the 
broadest and best sense. All the worlds are subjects 
for their observation ; all the possibilities are subjects 
for their experiment. 



232 THE LAND OF PROMISE 



CHAPTER Xni 

THE * CANONICAL BOOKS ' OF CIVIC RELIGION 

Thought belongs to the leisured few, but religion 
and much of literature belong to the many. Some 
of the thoughtful men I have alluded to in the last 
chapter have deserved mentioning in their capacity 
for representing the mind of the American nation in 
a scholarly way. The mind of the people, however, 
has its own forms of expressing itself. It chooses its 
literature, its culture ; in a sense, it makes of some of 
them the symbols of its own lay religion. In this 
sense, the mind of the nation may be studied through 
the almost religious interest it takes in certain forms 
of literature, and much more so in a phase of popular 
life and action that these predilections stand for. 

American and English literature are sometimes 
claimed to be as much one, and indivisible, as 
though there had been no severance by the Atlantic 
and no severance by the Revolutionary War. This 
view obtains some sanction from common allusions 
to Shakespeare as the poet and dramatist of the 
undivided British and American ancestry. Some 



* CANONICAL BOOKS' 233 

Britons, too, read American novels habitually, be- 
lieving that they are written by Britons ; Americans 
in considerable numbers read English writers, and 
take it for granted that they are American. Again, 
as all young America is schooled in affable manners 
towards all the world, the American visitor is quickly 
at home intellectually in England. There is scarcely 
an American in England who cannot chum equally 
with a prince or a pauper. He fits in in a moment 
with the arrangement of any country house. Dons, 
merchants, or middle-class tradesmen, are all as his 
familiars. I know Americans who fraternise as 
readily with fisher-folk and farm hands as they do 
with Oxford and Cambridge men. The American 
can fraternise with France and Italy, I believe, just 
as well as with Britain, and may be even with natives 
in all the Beyond of Europe. 

To argue from this intellectual familiarity that there 
is an identity of mind between, say, the Briton and the 
American, would be wholly false. The easy American 
manner of free and friendly address towards foreigners 
all around the world, marks the mind of a people 
temperamentally dissimilar from the mind of Britain. 

The mind of a people is coloured by some native, 
unconscious, mythological faith which stamps and 
shapes all its workaday thoughts. Heine vividly 
pictures the parousia of Scandinavian gods in Re- 
formation Germany, and in all the great revival of 



234 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

German literature. The Gaels, too, would sound a 
kind of awakening call to the sleeping fairy-world 
of ancient Ireland. Their appeal must, for sure, be 
inspired of a most vivifying faith before the Irish 
mind can again really and inwardly be with its 
ancient gods. 

The gods of a people cannot act for them or bless 
them until they are as real to every one as hand or 
face. America has got a mind of things of its own 
not because it digs up old mythologies, but because 
it implicitly owns its cultus of a Supreme Spirit in 
the background of all its own native thoughts. 

The Greeks once worshipped Apollo, Dionysius, 
and Mercury, as the immortal objective counterpart 
to the best qualities of their own Greek minds. The 
Italian peasant of to-day prefers to own his distant 
relationship with an ascetic God, but his human 
fellowship with a genial Madonna and playful saints, 
the counterpart to and model of the best of the life 
around him. The prudent and secular Frenchman, 
on the contrary, worships that mental and quick 
geniality which he calls V esprit^ but dares not believe 
that the truly worshipful is truly alive in any supreme 
or divine counterpart. 

But the easy American, it may be concluded from 
what I have to say about the culture of America, is 
either simple enough, or wise enough, or else both 
in one, to believe that his emotional high spirits, con- 



^CANONICAL BOOKS* 235 

tributory to the grace and saving humour of life, are 
somehow in essential and revealing kinship with the 
supreme Reality behind the appearances of the world. 
Therefore the God or Supreme Being of American 
culture, which colours the mentality of the entire 
people of America, is a kind of a * Zeus-Apollo ' of 
eternal good-humour and of genial and high-spirited 
interest in the life of all the world. 

Boston is the Mecca of the cultus of this implicit 
divinity of American thought. Boston is above all 
the cultus capital of the continental hinterland of 
States and cities behind New England. Its apostles 
once swept westward to the Cordilleras and along the 
Pacific coast. Only before San Francisco did they 
halt ; for San Francisco has all that it wants of its 
own. Boston cultus thus leads and animates a 
thousand-leagued following in much of New America. 
Many a rival, otherwise, has Boston in the affairs of 
the intellect, apart from Boston's unique office of 
fanning and fashioning the mythology of the present 
mind of America. New York is the vast book 
emporium ; Washington has the official library and 
governmental publications ; Philadelphia has a quiet 
and stately culture ; the South thinks for itself, with 
little allusion to the men and culture of the North ; 
moreover Chicago, Buffalo, Pittsburg, Baltimore, 
Indianapolis, St. Paul, and Minneapolis, San 
Francisco, Los Angeles, and Portland and Seattle, 



236 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

Denver, too, are in this or that measure literary 
centres. Yet, for certain, nowhere does culture rise 
to be a lay religion except in Boston. 

The * canonical gospels ' of this culture, by which I 
mean the sanctioned classics which are its chief lite- 
rary memorials, are simple, ordinary, commonplace, 
elementary — in a word, educational books. The 
young mind of America in a dozen big States in the 
mid- West goes through the Boston cultus training 
before it emerges clear and individual in the world. 
It is true that Boston does not express the practical 
American mind in its creative activities, whose sacred 
shrines are the New York cosmopolis and Pittsburg 
and Chicago. But before ever the typical American 
has begun to create his sky-scraper, or stock-yard, 
or dream of his smiling irrigation village, his mind 
has awakened into being from that which the Boston 
cult supplies. In the leisure hours, in interludes of 
the business of later years, he will follow the cue once 
given him wherewith to interpret life, though now in 
ways untrodden by the orthodox apostles of the cult 
who first instructed him. 

To some British observers New England culture 
may have seemed but a glorified apotheosis of 
Clapham and English suburbia. The moment one 
learns the truth that Boston commonplace is to the 
millions of young America the outward and sensible 
sign of an individual cult of humour, imaginative 



'CANONICAL BOOKS' 237 

activity, and intellect, it will be known that any 
literal judgment based on America's apparent likings 
for conventionalised classics must be reconsidered. 

New England culture has its rather carefully- 
selected or hedged-in set of classics which make 
up a sort of canonical scripture of this cult. Condi- 
tions of canonical admittance are elegance, grace, 
simplicity, prettiness, facility, and an easy, simple, 
genial plot. Literature not only is thus common 
and ordinary ; but it would be worthless for its 
canonical, its ritualistic, its sacramental purpose if 
it were not so. 

That in which the perusal of a Lucile is original, 
distinguished, unique, proper to America alone, is 
the fact that it is the token, the sign, the gospel, the 
rite, the sacrament of a faith in a transcendent Spirit. 
What is merely a drawing-room poem in England 
of an impossibly good and unreal world, may be 
seriously taken in America as life's own real and 
intimate religion which may be put into practice in 
the here and now, and in the real world. 

There are poets like Sidney Lanier who are to the 
very heart American, yet who are not of this great 
common lay ritual of the American mind. By a 
side altar for a reserved cult in the lay cathedral of 
America must we suffer them to sing. So mostly also 
with the reputedly representative Walt Whitman. 
Some few of his ' comrade poems ' may be educa- 



238 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

tionally canonical to the million-folded people. Many 
and many an American, in every phase of life, is in 
mind and faith a Walt Whitman though without the 
poet's art. It is this style and mannerism of his, 
so contrary to habits of the school open to the mind 
of America, which prevent him from fitting into his 
due place. This manner of his otherwise compre- 
hensive, and radically moral, interpretation of life 
requires an effort to the school-trained American to 
appreciate. But the canonical poetry I have referred 
to is packed and ready to his understanding in every 
sense. Therefore it happens that only those few 
who struggle to appreciate the historic Whitman can 
discover his latent congeniality with their own minds. 
But these sacred books of this American lay ' cult of 
spirit ' make up an anthology in poetry and prose 
suited to the exact level of intelligence and taste of 
the millions all round the country who attend 
American Schools in the Northern States. 

Among the contents of this anthology we find : — 
The shorter poems of Longfellow with ' Hiawatha ' ; 
certain stories of colonial and revolutionary and civil 
war heroes ; some poems of Bryant, Whittier, Burns, 
Keats, Tennyson, R. Lytton, Markham ; a few of 
Emerson's Essays ; portions of Ruskin and Tolstoi. 
Much of Edgar Allan Poe is also ' sacred,' but in his 
detective stories we open to another cult, that of the 
intellect, by the American boy. This is provided for 



* CANONICAL BOOKS' 239 

by a widespread romance of detect! vism, Pinkerton 
being the master-in-chief. 

What does America mean especially in the setting- 
apart and even the religious enhancement of this class 
of educational literature ? I should say that it means 
a worship of an all-pervading, all sociable ' world- 
spirit' in a manner discovered, interpreted, believed 
in by America as an indisputable article of that * I 
believe ' with which it also accepts ^ liberty ' and 
' fraternity ' as expressions of the Eternal One. It 
means a faith behind such ritual that all the kindling, 
emotional, imaginative good-humour of life, of which 
this anthology has become a sort of religious classic, 
are revealings of the one transcendent Reality which 
is within and behind the world. 

America, then, believes in ' God ' under the form 
expressed by the poet who said that what is * truly 
sweet' of temporal life is in the long-run of the 
eternities the ' sweetly true ' of eternal life. All 
the world adores, indeed, the beings of its ideal good- 
humoured imaginary Olympus ; but, since in Greece 
with its Apollo, and in Italy of the Christian Renais- 
sance, and in the England of Elizabeth, all the rest of 
the world is equally convinced that no such founda- 
tion reality of good-humour in Eternity ever was or 
ever will be. America has found out to its own 
satisfaction, and believes in heart-felt conviction, that 
good-humour as embodied in these works of man 



240 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

is a God-revealing gift from God. America also 
believes that in its inmost being the creation of God 
is a good-humoured Thing and Place. Therefore 
America can surrender itself to a faith in that which 
all the world elsewhere adores, but believes not. 

The working creed of the American is that the 
ideal and the actual can be linked together and the 
gulf between them bridged. Therefore there is a vast 
sphere of idealism which to him has a transcendent 
significance. Because of this faith he can himself 
give way to good spirits as a worship, as a consecra- 
tion — in a sense, as a union with a supreme end. 

America's secular definition of the * world-spirit ' 
as the power expressed in life's geniality, sociability, 
friendly humour, is a supreme achievement of the 
American mind and will. This serious cult of ' good 
spirits' as the foundation of a civilisation, turns a 
new page in the history of the world's culture. Geni- 
ality becomes now no mere expression of human 
emotion. Geniality is a true effulgence of the divine 
in human life ; it has become the outer testimony of 
the indwelling of the all-sustaining Spirit of God. 
The sinner, no less than the saint, is touched to the 
heart from some expression of this God-revealing 
power. Whether erroneously or not, genial spirits in 
a sense are believed to aid in the sweeping clean, the 
brightening, the pardoning, and, in a social sense, 
the saving of the world. 



* CANONICAL BOOKS' 241 

This all-embracing, all-illumining, all-pardoning, 
all-saving, all-producing good-humoured high spirits 
that America has bidden the all-comers within 
America to partake in, becomes to them as a newly- 
revealed expression of all that divine reality that 
transcends the visible life of man. 

This great, good, genial but almighty * world-spirit' 
is the real American God, whose worship is first pro- 
mulgated in the teachings of the canonical books of 
the Whittiers and Longfellows. The divine and 
human good-humour of these poets yields, in the 
esteem of the devotees of their civic religion, the last, 
deepest, best, holiest interpretations of the world 
and all that therein is. 

Thus it is that America is in a sense experienced 
to be, as Jacob Riis's book on the Making of an 
American felicitously illustrates, a kind of a religious 
pardon and indulgence to tens of thousands of the 
incoming rest of mankind. Many do not attain to the 
possession of the untold blessings imagined to be in 
the free bestowal of the plenteous commonwealth. 
But other thousands of Europeans who have settled 
in America, and have come to share in American life, 
have experienced the taking away of an old-world 
pessimism, soul -weariness, heavy memories, the 
association of religious authority with undivine self- 
assertiveness. All these now, having partaken of 
American plenty, and in new civic and religious 



242 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

rights, are conscious of having experienced a pardon- 
ing of all this past. Now for the first time in their 
experience, authority and God himself, it seems to 
them, have become associated with good-humoured 
friendliness to all that all real men are, in their desire 
for a genial worldly dwelling-place. 

It is inevitable that this worship of a genial * world- 
spirit ' should create its reactions, as well as all other 
vivid worships do. To some, may be, such worship 
is not taken seriously enough ; because the doctrine 
of the consorting of the eternal heavens and the Deity 
with the good-humour of the earth and man seems 
far too good a doctrine to be a true one. Hence we 
find mocking types of American agnosticism, some 
of which are, however, the mere rebound or recoil 
from a faith so implicit, that men dare to laugh 
at it. 

Then there is the reaction which happens to some 
from the shifting of the point of gravity of sanctions 
of conduct. The believer in the genial ^ world-spirit ' 
is intoxicated mentally with the optimism which this 
faith engenders. Everything is so good, that he 
leaves all alone to take care of itself. God seems so 
good-humoured and so pardoning that man is tempted 
the more readily to offend Him. Nearly all the 
vaunted corruption of America is the direct result 
of a too supreme and heretical acknowledgment of 
good-humour as expressing the ultimate divinity in 



* CANONICAL BOOKS* 243 

things. ' Corrupt ' Americans are mostly believers 
in a God who is lax in his sanctions, and too easy in 
condoning with evil conspirings. If I were to bring a 
foreigner into an assembly of fifty American citizens 
of whom forty-five were law-keepers, and five were 
grafters and law-breakers, probably the foreigner 
would pick out these five as the most genial, good- 
humoured, sociable men in all the assembly. 

Their optimism has become a kind of anarchic 
exaltation of irresponsibility. Their religion is a 
kind of adoration of good-fellowship among their 
acquaintances and supporters ; a dare-deviltry finding 
its inverted paradise in gay irresponsibility and reck- 
lessness ; renouncing in its pursuit the heaven of 
the moralists and the encomiums of the fame and 
sanctions of mankind. There are some who might 
be ready to class the notorious electioneer and ex- 
chief Devery of New York City among the list of 
these dare-devils and irresponsible ones. 

But a more genuine and honourable worship of 
the ^ world-spirit ' is also a note and characteristic 
of the mind of the whole of cultured America. This 
cultured geniality, the more often, may only reveal 
itself to new acquaintances from outside the circle 
when the neophyte proves that he is in possession of 
the opening key of sympathy. But from innumer- 
able home circles — from the' schoolroom's literary 
cult, this peculiar worshipping of the Spirit is for 



244 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

ever descending in expanding circles to all the 
American world. 

What makes the girl quick-witted and cultured 
and independent makes the boy a sportsman in a 
veritable, impassioned, religious zest. The very 
animal spirits of the football and baseball clubs 
possess a phase of sacredness of their own. 

Lumbermen in the Colorado ranges, mostly irre- 
sponsibles from all ranks of life, circling around the 
camp-stove at evening, spending their month's wages 
for ever in advance when they descend the moun- 
tains for a few days at pay-time, are devotees of this 
good-humoured God. 

Solemn-looking Western miners of the type who, 
when one of them appeared on a feast-day in a dress- 
suit, promptly made a gateway for admittance and 
charged sightseers fifty cents, bear them spiritual 
companionship. The Iowa farmer who risked a 
|20oo harvest in order to drive his daughter to a 
^ social ' was a faithful member of this lay religion. 
Any meeting of girls or young women in towns or 
cities of the long-vistaed Mississippi plains follows 
in the great procession. The Ladies' Guild of every 
prairie parish, with its weekly sociables and ^ angel 
cakes,' are members truly incorporate. The four 
thousand inhabitants of a city who deliberately take 
a sociable hour from business, daily, over mail dis- 
tribution, are also its genuine hierophants. The 



* CANONICAL BOOKS' 245 

people of the long, sociable corridors of the open- 
verandahed streets of Ohio or Indiana towns are 
genuine Mevout congregations' of the unquestion- 
ing believers that to be consecrated to good-humour 
is to stand in tune with the Infinite God. 

The practical geniality of the Catholic priest in the 
townships of the Mississippi States ; the affability of 
the Anglo-American rector ; the fervent social friend- 
liness of the Methodist preacher ; the grave gaiety 
of the Presbyterian and Congregationalist pastor, are 
evidences of this unifying civic worship of America. 
There is no place, no sphere of life, nor profession 
where perpetual ' high spirits ' do not rule the feast. 

The cultured Roman Catholic would soon pick out 
an expression of his faith in geniality in Botticelli, 
in Giacopone, in Correggio, in Troubadours, in the 
Franciscan Primitives and in their knightly founder, 
the man who also effected more than most mortals 
in the task of accomplishing the saintly allegiance 
between the things of earth and heaven. 

The cultured churchman would ingeniously antho- 
logise a library of high-spiritedness among English 
and American poets and social seers. The ordinary 
man, keen on business, unattached to any church, 
reputedly an agnostic or unbeliever, is here at least 
unquestioningly a believer too. The moment the 
day's business is done he is wont to relapse into his 
magic universe of sentiment. This land is peopled 



246 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

with every playfulness, deep-seated as the cosmic 
life. The care-weighted world is lightened to be as 
the joke of the great, good-humoured Jove. Eternal 
geniality bursts through ever, for, as by decree of 
the Jove he serves, it lies in wait for whatever the 
day may bring to pass, till the moment when the 
accidental and adventitious seriousness has reached 
its term. Nothing enters the magic portals here that 
is not good-humoured. No comrade or friend may 
now approach except as playmate. The very sorrows, 
deceitfulnesses, truculencies of daily life, have found 
their place in good-humoured, Trilbyan, theatrical 
caricature. But no solemnities of gloomy pessimistic 
literature, of the Hardys and Ibsens, or of men with- 
out an uplift, can go within. Even commercialism, 
pushcraft, every business rivalry, is here laughed at 
to the core. 

From such a cosmic-rooted playfulness of spirit, 
the rowdy bursting hurricane of commercial events is 
transmuted into the sport of this world-playgoer. 
Thus the very heart of materialism is laughed at 
inwardly and made to attune itself to play. In the 
same cult, the American of more leisure is on pursuit, 
around the world, of mysteries, old, new, far, near, 
religious, earthly, cosmic, divine or human. In an 
evening, at a certain club that I know, you will not 
find a man who is not on mystic quest into worlds 
often incredible to imagine. To take the pursuit 



'CANONICAL BOOKS* 247 

seriously would be to fail to see that it is what an 
American calls a * creation.' And for this very- 
reason, he can pursue the mystic quarry with a 
more whole-hearted seriousness than if he possibly 
could lose reputation by seriously believing in it. 
What is true and real in the pursuit is that the play 
which it stands for is to the American a symbol and 
an expression of the way in which God made the 
world and all that therein is. 

Taking it all in all, this secular belief in Spirit, 
the belief that there is an eternal, divine counterpart 
of what we are drawn to, in the high, genial spirits 
of man, is the foundation of the new real mind of 
things which constitutes the characteristic civilisation 
of America. Secular gaiety, entered upon religiously, 
with no reserve within the heart, is that which marks 
off the mind of real America from all other minds. 
This faith is the comrade, too, of all American work. 
In fact, without such a * spirit-comrade,' Americans 
never could work with the characteristic energy and 
the sprightly activity with which they habitually do 
work. 

There remains, then, to be illustrated in what 
manner this genial quick mind of America is ex- 
panded in the matter-of-fact activities of practical life. 
As the American is trained from childhood to portion 
out things methodically, constructively, and imagina- 
tively, in relation to possible achievement, he is 



248 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

ready unfailingly to apply this lesson the moment 
he begins to think of his business career. Instead of 
thinking about a concrete, real, material estate that 
he is to inherit, the American imagines a visual, 
potential 'estate, 'a scientific and imaginative, fortune- 
producing adaptivity to a certain line of trade or 
business or profession. As he is the more respon- 
sibly put in touch with actualities, there springs up 
in his mind a kind of mental gold-mine of wealth as 
the resource of his prospective social power. His 
imagination is fascinated. He puts superhuman 
energies into his business * field.' It becomes to him 
an alluring sport. Work and play become one and 
the same thing. Harvested out of this rich field or 
mined by delving deeply into it, he absorbs the 
monetary reserves, controlled single-mindedly to be 
spent with social grace. Riches are exclusively the 
instrument of this stamping-power of intellect upon 
society. No one can reply to entertaining ; no one 
can give his friends a new pleasure ; no one can hold 
large social gatherings ; no one can act with benefi- 
cence, without first of all a diligent, imaginative 
cultivation of his ' field ' of work. The sociable man 
is the materially resourceful man. Money is the 
scientific equipment of social beneficence, of social 
activity in the social leadership. I have known an 
American lose chance after chance of fortune, and in 
his days of trial he would consider nothing but the 



* CANONICAL BOOKS' 249 

loss of his social power. The same American would 
look upon being sociable as the supreme wealth of 
life. He would talk of So-and-so as good, beneficent, 
magnanimous, saying that you can well be all that 
immediately you have a banking account. 

This idealism really does much to take away from 
the mere vulgar weight of money-making. In fact, 
money, as money, is a non-existent commodity in 
large and influential sections of American life. Ex- 
cept imaginatively — that is, as a social instrument — 
allusions to money would be an unpardonable sole- 
cism, or even a social sin ; but it would be, on the 
other hand, the one sin that no one in such a circle is 
the least likely to commit. 



250 THE LAND OF PROMISE 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE AMERICAN PRESS 

As it is a great social instrument in education, re- 
ligion, politics, and knowledge of society, it is essen- 
tial to the completion of this book to report on some 
features of current American journalism. 

The American Press is not so much a news agency, 
as a chief instrument of social inter -communion. 
The local press in every small town is the medium 
through which every one communicates every inci- 
dent touching their own life and household to all 
their friends. This naturally presupposes a common 
friendliness among the citizens of the place ; and the 
practice ceases wherever the local society is secluded 
into sections, which, for one reason and another, 
hold themselves apart. In this case, only the public 
individuals are perpetually, but good-humouredly, 
lionised by the local press. 

In great cities the press is a more carefully pre- 
pared social medium, each paper aiming at appealing 
to one of the typical moods of some noted division 
of the reading public. 



THE AMERICAN PRESS 251 

The typical daily paper of America is also artistic- 
ally matched with the emotions suited to each recorded 
event. The press is as the great barometer which 
thus reports the fluctations of the mercurial American 
temperament while recording the daily story of the 
world's life. Camping once in summer in a cool 
island off New York, with an American publisher 
and his talented wife, the week-end visitors had just 
been landed from the cat-boat. My friends rushed 
over to the landing-stage to get the news, on this 
their only chance during the week, but the visitors 
only brought with them a copy of the New York 
Evening Post, My friend the publisher immediately 
set it aside in disgust, saying it was an ^English' 
paper. They both preferred to wait another newsless 
week rather than destroy their emotional visions of 
things by a matter-of-fact account of the doings of 
the world. No prejudice against England was here 
intended ; they merely illustrated the fact that the 
sole reason why most Americans ever open a paper 
was not to be found in the fact-recording paper of 
financial interest, like the Evening Post. The 
American wants no catalogue of world facts. He 
wants news of all sorts from far countries and near 
States in so far as each is temperamentally affect- 
ing the actual mind and emotion of America. In a 
literal sense nothing could be less exact than such 
news. In an impressionistic sense it is scientific 



252 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

enough. The impressionistic American press scien- 
tifically registers the temperamental attitude of say- 
ten million people of the real America towards a 
tragedy, a landslide, a cyclone, a great fire, a world 
policy, a social function, a terrible war. American 
journalism is thus artistically modulated to emotions, 
sensitivities, feelings, sentimentalities, passions, in- 
dignations, apprehensions, terrors, delights, joys, 
sadnesses, pleasures, pains, sufferings. In brief, it 
is the journalism of the fact of soul-variability and 
of soul fortune. And it is not a mirror of the fact of 
things as they are in themselves. 

In the text of its papers, therefore, are to be found 
the tribal lays of the American people. They are 
a livelong poem, an exalted, quivering, palpitant, 
daily life-psalm. They constitute the war-cry, the 
fight of life, the animation of hopes, the recorder and 
construer and consolidator of the daily breath of life 
of the mind and heart of a great people. 

One might be tempted to call the ' English ' Even- 
ing Post the scientific paper, and the New York 
Journal the loose, free, unmethodical, conversational 
paper. But in reality there is far more cleverness 
and art and skill in the paragraphs of the New York 
Journal than in any matter-of-fact paper whatever in 
the world. The farther away from the literal truth 
you suppose the column of the New York Journal to 
be, the more talented may be the deliberately artistic 



THE AMERICAN PRESS 253 

effects and humour which flash through its pages. 
The ordinary man can record his experience of a 
journey to the tropics ; but it would require quite an 
extraordinary man to write of a Sentimental Journey 
of adventure like Laurence Sterne. In a sense a 
New York Journal^ a Herald^ a World, are the 
Sentimental Journey through Modern America re- 
ported for every American every day of the year by 
skilled litterateurs. For this reason the most talented 
men on the New York press are to be found at 
work in compiling these tribal lays and Sentimental 
Journeys which touch the real millions of America in 
the columns of ih^ Journal and the World, 

There is the merest mechanical and superficial 
likeness between the one-cent press of America and 
the halfpenny press of England. No English paper 
but makes its appeal to a well-defined English tradi- 
tion that it endeavours to interpret and to amplify. 
The old outspoken radicalism since the time of the 
Chartists is implicit in one English daily ; the appeal 
to the square common sense of the plain man against 
radical violence is implicit in another ; even in an 
educative radical paper like the Daily News the 
proportion of traditional allusions is very large and 
very implicit. 

But in the United States the situation is this : that 
the great common mind of millions from every corner 
of Europe or their descendants, have to be addressed 



254 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

in an absolute common, cosmopolitan, international 
human appeal. The successful editor must be im- 
mersed in the foundation simplicities of the all-world 
of America as it is. He must touch the heart-strings 
of the broad, unfettered, unreserved, emotional re- 
sponse that humanity so situated is likely to give, the 
moment it understands the news it reads. 

Analyse a ' leader ' of the New York Journal^ the 
reputed model of the Yellow Press of the world. 
There is nothing to beat or rival Arthur Brisbane's 
daily emotional talks to the JournaVs clientele, else- 
where. Every leader is simply an oratorical, almost 
Shakespearian, address to humanity itself ; each one 
of them is clever enough to interest, to teach, to 
impress, to persuade, to convince a million of the 
great compound of real America — as a live, single, 
marching on, and about-to-be triumphant mass. 
The million is vitally concerned with, and made 
to feel so with, each of these big-typed, many- 
paragraphed articles. They are all about its own 
existence, its well-being, its aims, ideals, wishes, 
works and power of achievement. In clear, solemn, 
leading notes point by point is argued and the field 
swept through. Nothing is assumed or taken for 
granted. There are no jumps, breaks, or references 
to what has already been said. Starting with the 
foundation-fact of the being and well-being of the 
people, or the indubitable rights of a living man to 



THE AMERICAN PRESS 255 

remain a living, free, independent man in a free 
country, the writer-orator shows, say, the terrible, 
reckless, godless, lawless, savage, barbarous and 
uttermost contradiction to the foundation right of 
every man to be a man involved in the recent action 
of a great corporation in fencing- in a monopoly, 
outclassing competition and working with political 
leaders to paint things fair and hoodwink the people. 
There follows an appeal to the foundation right of 
humanity and the Constitution of the United States. 
Directions are urged clear and definite to fire the 
people's defiance in the future voting days. To call 
this Yellow sensationalism, because it reverts from the 
cultured allusion that the small number can appre- 
ciate, to the great, broad, common, clear, distinct 
allusions rooted in the foundations of humanity that 
this reading million of every race can take in in a 
moment, is a misnomer. A paper like the Jour7ial 
may only fairly be criticised for not keeping up to its 
own best ethical standards. Indeed the temptation to 
play the demagogue in exaggerations, falsifications, 
appeals to passions, invention of grievances, glorifi- 
cation of crime, and humdrum rhetoric is necessarily 
most severe to the editor writing under pressure for 
timed productivity, who also knows he can count 
upon an ill-instructed and short-memoried myriad 
reading class. A besetting temptation to the 
* Yellow ' editor is to label, class, categorise actual 



256 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

men and women into a predetermined schedule after 
the manner of those old moralistic novels where 
every good man was painted too markedly white, and 
every * villain ' too markedly black for the real wojld. 
Moreover, there is a tendency in all directions to deal 
with stage creations rather than with real men. Thus 
in Colorado, among the five daily papers of Denver 
there was a standard puppet ' Englishman ' who was 
turned on in a moment with just the same talk and 
mannerisms when any Englishman whatsoever was 
reported as visiting Denver. Probably there are 
editorial pigeon-holes where this astonishing being 
exists. I do not mean a type like the ' John Bull ' 
or * La France ' of the comic press ; I mean a set 
characterisation, manner of speech, thought and 
affectation which is attributed to every Englishman 
who visits, say, a mine in Colorado, or invests in 
an irrigation ditch. Whether this stage figure of 
the editor expresses the prior traditional view of 
Coloradans concerning Englishmen, or whether the 
existing made-up mind about Englishmen is the 
creation of the press, I do not know, but an English- 
man finds in Colorado that he is all ^ known in 
advance,' and it would be mighty wise of him to 
know his stage self before he wishes to make known 
his real self to the affable pressmen of Denver. 

In this ^ creative ' note of its journalism is the real 
portrayal of the humour of America, When the 



THE AMERICAN PRESS 257 

editor of a certain famous halfpenny English news- 
paper visited America some years ago, he was asked 
to send a daily column of notes to the press. This 
he cleverly did, but the good-humoured show element 
of American journalism was what he wholly missed, 
and this made his * News in Tabloids ' fall rather flat. 
This humour is the developed result of the vast 
bizarre spectacle of the quaint unfulfilments of the 
omnium gatherum world of the United States. The 
most perfect expression of American journalistic 
humour is found in Mr. Peter Dunne's * Mr. Dooley' 
and ' Hinnessey.' But every ' flash ' leading paper in 
the big cities of America is also instinct with the 
same. As Mr. Dooley has his * Poor Cubia,' his 
* prisidint,' his * Constitooshun,' and the long list of 
world-comicalities whose actions are made to reveal 
the truth of things, so there is a suspicion of comic- 
ality as to the entire reporting science of the United 
States press. 

Paradoxical though it seems, I should say that the 
ostensibly serious columns of many an American 
paper are more adequately humorous — since humour 
must touch the actual — than the columns of the 
ostensible wit and humour of the same paper. 
Taking it all in all, then, American journalism fairly 
quickens the excitements of everyday life. Firstly, 
deeds of the chief executive of America are recorded, 
worthy of the place and the man ; the President has 

R 



258 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

entertained some one with an ' idea ' big enough 
to reform a continent or two — may be with cata- 
strophic effect to one of the parties concerned ; he has 
been practising the ' Simple Life' ; he has read Omar 
in a boat in Oyster Bay for judgment ; he has followed 
up the deeds of ancient Connaughtsmen to kindle 
the fighting mood ; he has been shooting bears in 
Mississippi or planned cougar-hunting with San Juan 
comrades in Colorado. More seriously supreme ques- 
tions of the nation's policy, such as the constructive 
interpretation of the Constitution to include colonies, 
or some vast latent power of the executive, are 
never wholly excluded, and are often fully discussed. 
Then there is the humour of Congress leaders and 
senators and of the presidential informal relationship 
with the Houses ; national or inter-State legislation 
is discussed ; corporations have arisen to control the 
trade of Denver ; thirteen railway lines have com- 
bined to protect their interest against reputedly uncon- 
stitutional taxation ; lines on which long rows of cities 
and whole States are dependent have been bought 
up for inclusion in a system ; a J. J. Hill has grown 
tired of New York and means to put through a great 
trunk line from the north-west to New Orleans as a 
European outlet. 

Then the deeds of great statesmen, governors of 
States, are chronicled. Governor X. has a thousand 
militia under arms to stop a prize-fight ; Governor Z« 



THE AMERICAN PRESS 259 

has vetoed five bills in his State congress, or removed 
some one from office, which dismissal had been re- 
plied to by counter removals. Schemes of national 
irrigation and afforestation are mooted. The judges 
of the Supreme Court of America have been acting 
paternally, and thrown out Congressional and State 
laws. Their counterpart, the Supreme Court of a 
State, has undertaken to free the capital city of the 
State from corruption. 

Never a day passed in the West without a kaleido- 
scopic array of vital news displaying itself : news 
which materially affected the entire population, say, 
of Colorado. Thus the constitutionality of the 
Sugar Tariff with the Philippines, if rejected by the 
Supreme Court, would close up whole cities dependent 
on the great factories recently built in Colorado, as 
at Loveland. A certain prospective railway to 
Routt County would double the population of 
Denver ; a competitor might turn all the traffic into 
the Union Pacific in Wyoming. The daily life of 
the country is reported as in a tremendous roulette 
table of Monte Carlo which casts into the stake the 
entire fortunes of the people of a district every day 
in the livelong year. In the solemn and graphic 
and good-humoured survey of all these events 
happening, or events threatened, ^ scientifically ' re- 
ported according to their bearings on local fortunes, 
is the keynote of journalistic success in a city like 



26o THE LAND OF PROMISE 

Denver. The editor weighs the value of affairs for 
the State. He conditions his judgment by the 
popular esteem of their value. When the people are 
aware, it is safe to report the situation. If not, some- 
times the editor must turn apostle and champion, set 
forth or praise the seriousness of a problem to the 
people. The news as it comes in is cut up, with its 
leading feature in the head sentence. The rest 
gradually follows like a dying-out howl or scream. 
Thus the end portion, being of less moment, can be 
clipped away in later editions in case something 
more important is on the scenario. 

With the vivid emotional manner of the treatment 
of all special news, with the daily sketch of politics, 
the dramatic display of all persons and things accord- 
ing to their native humour and due characterisation, 
is the daily fare prepared to which the citizen in every 
centre of the Union is treated. 

Such constitutes the daily press of America. The 
Sunday edition contains a full-sized magazine for the 
people, edited by a special editor and staff. The 
magazine portion is for entertainment, not for news. 
Probably there are several low-priced monthly 
periodicals on the English market that could be 
edited in about half an hour's work into a Sunday 
magazine of an American paper. It is a surprise to 
the foreigner to see a magazine bedecked in the great 
folio pages of the daily press. He will find there 



THE AMERICAN PRESS 261 

some amazing adventures a la Rougemont; scientific 
researches into the origin of life ; some weird stories 
capably illustrated ; also pictures of the rooms, 
house, or furniture of some historic personality ; a 
full account of some recent discovery in medical 
appliances ; all about the great actor or actress ; and 
above all, he will find humour. If Mr. Dooley does 
not review the world this week, Mr. Kendrick Bangs 
will prophesy about the future of New York in a way 
to suggest hobgoblins. Then a number of celebrities, 
professors, novelists, or magnates, will express their 
views on subjects of importance, such as some new 
social craze, or hats, or waists. 

Finally there are the coloured illustrations. The 
note of these is their obviousness. Buster Brown 
never fails to look prim, to bring-to the house over 
his ears, to be soundly thrashed by his fond and 
fashionable mother, to write philosophic reflections. 
For a long time there were the Katzenjammer Kids 
and their matter-of-fact German mother who dute- 
ously flogged the naughty truants before quenching 
a fire or aiding the ship sinking through their 
diabolical wit. Then there was the errand-boy who 
upset kingdoms by dawdling to see games. Then 
there was the desperate planner of mischief, which 
knowing beforehand, he would help to remedy, and 
usually got a five -dollar bill for his forethought. 
Then there were the two tiger cats, romantic, jealous, 



262 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

frivolous, or right-down rakes. Then there were a 
series of ingenious adventures of a little girl and 
various monsters which were concluded happily when 
you turned the same pictures upside down to the tune 
of her happy deliverance. 

In a sense the Sunday edition takes the place of 
church with non-churchgoers, and in order to meet 
a want, it usually supplies a sermon. The paper can 
be ordered without the Sunday supplement, and 
church people often do that. Yet the Sunday edition 
sells in numbers far beyond the week-day issues. 

A copy of the issue of Denver Republican for 
Sunday April 12, 1908, is in four divisions, com- 
prising forty-two pages. Of the first three divisions 
which are the most interesting, there are about thirty 
columns of news, which record among other incidents 
the account of a public church thanksgiving over the 
local abolition of saloons, and the annual drive of a 
flock of 50,000 sheep from Utah to Colorado, accom- 
panied by sixty armed men. There is also a whole 
page of news from England, two pages of society 
news, two of sport, one of the stage, one of criticism 
of books, two of fashions, three whole pages devoted 
to humour, two pages of novels, one of geographical 
exploration, one on friendly societies such as the 
* Mystic Shriners,' the 'Elks,' the 'Pythian Knights,' 
the 'Woodmen of the World,' and others. These 
societies, incidentally, are a noted feature in American 



THE AMERICAN PRESS 26 



o 



Society, and in a sense they form a kind of lay 
church. They even have ministerial chaplains of 
their own, the sermon of one of whom is reported 
in this issue. In this same issue of the paper there 
are also about thirty illustrations, and a page of 
well-written editorials, together with a good deal of 
poetry and literary excerpts. Evidently the Denver 
Republican aspires to be a moulder of thought in the 
Rocky Mountain area. 

Of the more serious type of paper there are, of 
course, many examples : The New York TimeSy the 
New York Sim (made famous by Charles A. Dana), 
the New York Evening Post^ the New York Tribune 
(founded by Horace Greeley), the Washington Post^ 
the Boston Herald^ the Springfield Republican, the 
Louisville Courier, the Omaha Bee. The Sun is 
noted for caustic wit and criticism of public fallacies. 
Allusion to some of these has been made in the chapter 
on New York. 

But the two supreme examples of serious weekly 
journal are the Outlook and the Independent. The 
Outlook is one of the greatest educative institutions 
of America. It has achieved the miracle of being 
religious and not sectarian ; of being interesting, 
but ethical ; of being popular, but profound. It is 
the chief interpreter of Mr. Roosevelt's policy, and 
while independent of party, is an immovable champion 
of social justice all round the world. It reflects the 



264 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

known public character and moral qualities of its 
editor, Dr. Lyman Abbott. There is no English 
paper to compare with it unless we say the Spectator^ 
but the Outlook is lighter, more popular, in a sense 
more brilliant, than this great British organ of laissez 
faire and Free Trade. Every English weekly is 
toned with the cynicisms of a party because it must 
thrive by cultivation of a special class for whom it 
would never dare to say elementary things. But the 
American Outlook^ with its wide national circulation, 
while clever and judicial, never makes an allusion 
above the heads of its great subscribing class, and for 
this reason it is one of the most powerful educational 
papers in the United States or elsewhere. 



CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA 265 



CHAPTER XV 

A COMMON CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA 

I PURPOSELY leave out of view a consideration of the 
chief divisions of American Christianity, for while 
most worthy of record, yet, from the fact that they 
are various and manifold, they cannot illustrate the 
immediate problem of my present study, which is the 
question of the structural and spiritual unity of the 
American people. There are, however, certain phases 
of American religion, an appreciation of which is 
integral to a true understanding of this subject. 

A French observer said that American Christianity 
realised Comte's ideal of a religion of humanity, that 
is, of a religion whose symbols were the banners of 
the social union of mankind. In no positivist or 
agnostic sense, American Protestantism is truly fast 
becoming a social religion, a positive, practical, work- 
ing-together of humanity in a brotherly faith, typified 
by the Christian Endeavourers, the Y.M.C.A.'s, the 
Epworth League, the Brotherhood of St. Andrew. 
But the social bent of American religion often lies 
hidden under the appearance of some rigid adher- 
ence to literalism. 



266 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

In a mountain town, whose fortunes were con- 
tingent upon neighbouring mines, the propinquity 
of limestone and a smelter, I have conversed with a 
doctor's wife whose serious views of life were wrapped 
up in texts which went to prove the necessity of adult 
baptism and of total immersion in the waters. As 
all the world in this little mining settlement, situated 
nearly two miles above sea- level, was daily con- 
fronted with hardships, difficulties, and physical 
dangers to fortune and life, the prominence given 
to this antiquated baptismal controversy seemed quite 
grotesque. One might have leaned to the opinion 
that American theologies were the creation of the 
need of conversational equipment of the tea-table and 
the drawing-room, and not at all a serious tackling 
of life's confrontments. 

But the evidences from closer observation did not 
tend to bear out this supposition. In the same settle- 
ment on the road to the great Collegiate Peaks I met 
another Baptist woman who had made a present to 
her little son of a linen set of moving coloured pano- 
ramas of all Christ's life to prepare the youth for the 
day of the great awakening. She unwound for me 
the whole scroll as though it were a vision of a noble 
heroic world, saying with feeling, ' Ah ! none of us 
could do those mighty works ! ' 

Baptism really meant to her the entrance into a 
heroic Christ-life that the child was being prepared to 



CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA 267 

undertake in a sweeping and final renunciation of the 
easy ways and manners of the mining camp. 

I met another Baptist lady, the owner of a ranche, 
and of an hotel for a summer resort, who spoke with 
unqualified indignation against a Methodist who was 
lax, at least from the Methodist rule of life. One 
might have thought that there was not much charity 
in what she said, until she added casually, as what 
should be taken for granted, that the fond, gay ways 
of the young man would have been unblamable if he 
did not pretend to be one of the Holy Society. By 
this ' Holy Society ' I found that she meant the 
Methodist, Baptist, Congregationalist and Presby- 
terian communities. Without a suspicion of any 
unctuous rectitude, these Evangelical Christians were 
viewed by her as a free society or club professing 
social holiness. They were as free to join this club 
of Christians as to remain outside, or also as free to 
leave the club after they had joined it ; but while pro- 
fessing social holiness, as honest men and women 
they must comply with the club rules and he social 
holiness. 

It is probably true to say that these two instances 
are typical of the religious tendency of the twenty- 
nine millions of Evangelical Christians of the United 
States. 

To a would-be seer of destinies of American Christ- 
ianity, this socialising or unsectarianising tendency 



268 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

of Protestantism seems to be the most momentous 
force to be taken into account. 

If Protestantism is only religious opposition to 
Catholicism, it cannot have any future in a great 
commonwealth whose very constitution sanctions 
freedom of development to all creeds of Christendom, 
and certainly to the Roman Church. 

But the real force of the Protestant Reformation 
never was wholly religious. Calvin, from the begin- 
ning, was a social reorganiser as well as a theocratic 
subordinator of states and politics to Genevan or other 
church elders. The Scotch Calvinists transformed 
the whole of lowland Scotland's social outlook and 
practice. The Independents in England attempted 
to call into being a new nation in which all men were 
called to be kings. Massachusetts was quite as 
much a social as a religious exodus from the Calvin- 
istic Egypt, the Latin social world, and from the 
reputed outposts of pagan ways and manners in 
England. 

The original Calvinistic theocratic movement was 
partly ecclesiastical, partly political, and partly social. 
The inheritors of Puritan and Evangelical traditions 
in America to-day see the line of infinite development 
before them, mainly in the direction of a religion- 
fostered scientific reconstruction of human society in 
the direction of social and civic purity and of brotherly 
co-operativeness. If American Protestantism had 



CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA 269 

merely been a protest against certain types of ecclesi- 
asticism and politics, it would have spent its force 
when its own self-protective establishments in the 
several New England colonies had been dissolved ; 
when the Anglican establishments of Virginia and 
the Carolinas, and the privileged position of certain 
communions in other colonies, had been abolished in 
the Revolutionary Era. Protestantism dropped its 
religious and political sectionalism at the moment 
when Evangelicals and Puritans recognised that 
ecclesiastical privileges being once and for ever 
rescinded, they must, as Americans, now support 
Episcopalians and Catholics in every way as their 
own social and civil and religious equals. Protest- 
antism entered more single-mindedly now, in conse- 
quence, upon the career of protesting against the 
disruptions and negations of social, civic, and family 
life. 

The Biblical Puritanism of Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, 
Jeremiah, Malachi had been a recognition, in the 
light of the Eternal One, that life and its beginning, 
its home, its care, its preservation, are sacred to the 
Eternal God. So long, also, as any destructive con- 
tradiction to the purity, beauty, fulness, manliness 
or womanliness of home, city, community, or race 
remain, so long will a reason be found why a humane 
Puritanism should stand for the world-work of social 
integration. Protestantism, in assuming this social 



270 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

Puritanism, thereby relinquishes its sectionalism in 
religion, and its cliquish morals. It has entered upon 
its plain, human, universal, conversional career of 
identifying the service of God with a more pure and 
more brotherly life amid mankind. 

Evangelical Christianity, whose faith is centred 
upon the Atonement by a process of attrition of un- 
congenial elements, thus becomes in America, the 
science of the attainment of that social ideal that the 
Eternal One has set before the world in the life of 
the Son of God. Its faith and practice are a con- 
tinuous protest against the Satan of all the negations 
of family life, of civic life, or of the social life of 
mankind. 

This wave of conservatism, singling out social and 
civic purity as the basis of national welfare, is then 
so much the stronger because it is a true develop- 
ment of the ancestral religion of American Protest- 
antism. 

When the testing moment came in which Protest- 
antism was tried in the crucial experience of a nation's 
work, Puritan Protestantism, though hampered then 
with theological and social sectionalism, renewed its 
life by intensively withdrawing itself upon a humane 
interpretation of the first strength in which it resisted 
the corruptions of former states and churches. 

Ceasing to be a political propaganda, Puritanism 
became more unreservedly and scientifically a social 



CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA 271 

force. The sectionalism of warring with State and 
Church, of bigoted exclusiveness and rivalry with 
neighbouring colonies, gave place to the scientific 
humanism of warring with all disruptive social and 
civic influences. Its ideal became to preserve, to 
beautify, to aid, to adorn human life, because the 
reign of human blessedness in a great brotherly 
family of God was now seen to be the true theocracy, 
rather than the political control by the elders, over 
the regimen of states. 

Humanity might be unlovely, fallen, degenerate, 
abject, worldly, contemptible. But the divine atone- 
ment of mankind with God meant social integration, 
social purification, social ennoblement, as the true 
worship of God. Might it not even mean a brotherly 
co-operation and care for all, the consolidation of rich 
and poor? Not the setting apart of an elect few good 
men, but a compassing of a more fraternal, co-opera- 
tive, socially-redeemed humanity became the greater 
goal of its endeavours. And this renewed society 
was to be perfect in earthliness, because based 
upon the common recognition of the native heaven- 
liness and sacredness, of all the life that God had 
made. 

The American Puritan of the United States is thus 
merely the man whose religion directs him to the 
practical and patriotic science of civic, of social, of 
personal life. Thus the great distinction throughout 



272 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

the West, between the temperance division of society 
and the saloon element, is not based upon any section- 
alism in opinion. The saloon man is perfectly at one 
with the temperance man about the cankerous effect 
of drink in a new society with none of the restraining 
routine of older countries. I have heard him tell me 
so in an absolutely frank manner. It is merely a 
question of the motive strong enough to inspire and 
animate the patriotic humane resolve. A man is not 
unctuously above humanity who drinks not at all. 
He is simply on the lowest level beneath which he 
would not be co-operatively human at all. 

The same ideal is also in mind in questions like 
that of Sunday observance. I heard one of the 
greatest Puritan preachers in America, Dr. Philip 
Moxom, explain the need of Sunday observance from 
the point of view of social well-being. After the 
service and sermon there was an adult Biblical class 
which I attended. The subject embraced the text 
' The Son of Man is lord, even of the Sabbath.' This 
descendant of the Sabbatarians said that ' Son of 
Man ' here meant mankind — that Christ taught that 
humanity itself was lord of the Sabbath. The day of 
rest was given for what Dr. Moxom called ' social 
integration,' that is, for the building up and con- 
solidarity of human society. If, said he, it were in 
the interests of mankind to alter or abolish the 
Sabbath, Christ Himself taught that it was within 



CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA 273 

the rights of the Son of Man, that is, of mankind, to 
do so. The human and the divine sanctions were 
practically interchangeable, because God willed 
nought but that man should have life, and have life 
more abundantly. 

But it is not generally believed that this divine 
humanity was to be won by any philanthropic, 
humane, charitable, socialistic amelioration of the 
human lot. The foundation of all true social re- 
form, to the new Puritan, consists in a broadened, 
humanised evangelical process of individual con- 
version. It requires that each one should live within 
the sanctity proper to his respective state of life. 
The evangelical Christian and Puritan is not self- 
consciously altruistic. He is taught reverently to 
seek for individual holiness, purity, love, peace, joy, 
helpfulness as mere religious submission to God. 
This new conservatism of Evangelical Christianity 
is the new animating and rallying force in each 
religious congregation of American Protestantism. 
It has given zest to the congregation's coming 
together to hear the Word of God. It has given 
substance and meaning and interpretation to the 
symbolic fellowship with one another in the Protes- 
tant Communion. There is no township or settle- 
ment on the prairies where I have been in which 
Evangelical Christians are not a centre for the truer 
humanisation of local society by co-operativeness 

s 



274 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

among themselves, and a civic apostolate among the 
rest of the citizens. 

It is characteristic of America that this socially- 
conservative movement that has been inwardly trans- 
forming Evangelical Christianity should have used 
minutely and precisely all the old points of dogma. 
The abstract thought of France and Germany is non- 
existent in America. To take an illustration : on 
the occasion when the General Assembly of the 
Presbyterians of America wished to emphasise the 
view of the Christly doctrine of salvation which 
the more serious critics of the New Testament had 
come to accept, they recognised that all American 
Presbyterians were wont already to interpret the 
seemingly rigid clauses of the Westminster Con- 
fession independently of the stiff abstract theories of 
predestination which it embodied. They saw that 
revision therefore was uncalled for except in the 
instance of two statements of exceptional literalism. 
The Assembly was satisfied to draw up a Short 
Statement for the laity, which emphasised from the 
Prophets and the Gospels the faith in the universal 
call of mankind within the brotherly covenant of 
Christ. From an abstract point of view this was 
a total reversion of the main Calvinistic dogma of 
limited election. Yet when the Short Statement was 
brought from the Assembly to the presbyteries, and 
from these provincial synods to the congregations, 



CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA 275 

scarcely a critic arose who said that from an ab- 
stract point of view the Short Statement was an 
absolute reversal of the Presbyterian creed of three 
centuries. 

The millions of minds weary over a recurrently 
anxious business week are not the minds that have 
the fierce keen edge on Sunday of the logical French- 
man or of the philosophic German. Every day, 
every week, has taught every American some ex- 
perimental wisdom about the world and man. Some 
would relax themselves into a world of sentiment and 
play, severed, in every respect possible, from contact 
with the real world. To others all religion is taboo 
which is not supernatural and transmundane in an 
uttermost extent of reaction of the imagination from 
matter-of-fact routine. 

The American may either choose or emphasise, 
but will never deny, a dogma of the Christian faith. 
And the dogma of faith which he does chose he will 
interpret into accord with the allotment of experi- 
mental wisdom that week by week has been given 
into his possession. So to the religious conserva- 
tives the leading symbols of all the denominations 
gradually become understood without any conscious- 
ness of ^ development ' in their bearings on social 
integration. Adult baptism becomes the symbol of 
the social reconstruction which it is the life-destiny 
of every Christian to accomplish, and all the Puritan 



276 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

dogmas of Presbyterians are interpreted increasingly 
and intensively on the social plane. Methodism not 
one whit the less, but in a sense with greater ease 
and simplicity, becomes the worship of God by the 
solemn sacrifice of purity of life. 

A large body of Congregationalists and Campbel- 
lites in a more obvious and outward manner have 
taken up the social and fraternal conception of re- 
ligious experience. The ordered revolution within 
the operation of Evangelical Christianity is here aided 
by the results of those scientific studies of the univer- 
sities which have attributed an objective reality to 
the growth-changes of the conversion age of young 
people, or a significance and inspiration value to the 
phases of the mystic life. Meanwhile, a constant 
self-surrender is demanded to sustain the class, con- 
gregation, or religious organisation. American 
members of churches are sometimes quite accus- 
tomed to pay an entire tithe of their monthly income 
over church expenses, or otherwise they devise 
and support socials, tea-parties — where permissible, 
dances — potato-bakes, and a hundred and one means 
of rallying the local members of society, whether 
church members or no, to cover the ever-threatened 
financial deficit to the budget of the church work 
and the pastor's sustentation fund. 

All this has been effected without any alteration of 
dogmatic creeds. In a sense, only dogma has been 



CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA 277 

the energy engendering power of social organisa- 
tions. In this manner it may appear, from the fer- 
vent championship of faith in Christ's divinity in 
the reunion of the Y.M.C.A. in December 1907, that 
the sociaHsing movement in American reHgion has 
grown from the midst of faith, and is fed by faith 
rather than by any outside influence. 

Faith here teaches practice, and practice becoming 
organic and scientific, and therefore possessing an 
experience of its own, vitaHses and humanises faith 
itself. 

Instances, perhaps, where the impulse has proceeded 
more directly and consciously from civic enthusiasms 
are the so-called institutional churches of America. 
There are churches, Congregational, Episcopalian or 
Presbyterian, in which ten, twenty, or thirty social 
institutions like clubs and classes, are managed by 
the church. 

The ^ Institutional Church ' means a church of any 
denomination, whose main activities are in the line 
of organised social effort. The word * institutional ' 
qualifies the manner in which these activities are 
ordered ; that is, in institutions, clubs, gymnasia, 
creches. Such a church offers to all neighbouring 
populations an opening to their activities ; an opening 
for their social services for others ; an opening for 
help or fellowship, in case they are in need of it. 

When Dr. William Rainsford was the rector of 



278 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

St. George, Stuyvesant Square, New York, his church 
was the greatest of those called institutional. But 
also it had five thousand communicants ; a larger 
number than that of any of the other hundred and fifty 
Episcopalian Churches in Greater New York. These 
^ institutions,' therefore, cannot fairly be said to inter- 
fere with the spiritual life of the parish. 

Architecturally, an institutional church is dignified, 
gracious and well-proportioned. The doorway is 
large and inviting, and there are no iron railings. In 
a country district there is a suitable provision for the 
vehicles of the worshippers, and in warm climates the 
possibility of an occasional out-of-door service is 
considered. Generally the auditorium is of the ^ egg- 
oval ' shape, a design which has the best acoustic 
properties. Around the auditorium will be grouped 
the vestries, pastor's office, Sunday-school rooms, 
church parlours, gymnasia, baths, bowling alleys, 
and club-rooms. 

Internally the building looks cosy. The seats are 
spacious and fitted with cushions, hassocks, hat-racks, 
umbrella-stands, shoe-shelves, and book-rests, with 
service-books in large type and hymn-books with 
tunes. Pencils and envelopes are also provided for 
special contribution forms. 

Palm leaf fans are freely provided in the hot 
weather. Frequently the entire floor is carpeted. 
Every effort is made to secure quietness. In all the 



CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA 279 

newer buildings, pew-renting has been abolished. 
The sidesmen, known as ^ushers,' are chosen for 
their urbanity. In the richer churches the men are 
paid for their services, and have a room for their 
convenience. Casual visitors are made particularly 
welcome, but without ostentation. Among the ac- 
cessories of an institutional church are cloak-rooms, 
bicycle shelters, and in some cases a nursery-room 
where mothers can leave their infants while attending 
service. 

The service in a non-liturgical church is largely 
musical. The organ is a fine instrument, the organist 
an expert musician, and the choir is frequently a 
highly trained quartette. Mixed surpliced choirs are 
usual, and the women choristers wear a suitable head- 
dress, generally a college cap. The comprehensive, 
protracted, unpremeditated prayer in entirely un- 
known in New York. Under a system by which the 
minister often holds his position at the will of the 
congregation, poor preaching or poor oratory is 
inconceivable. 

The typical American sermon is a short, interest- 
ing, extempore discourse, delivered without much 
mannerism, touching upon topics of current life, and 
invariably appealing strongly to American patriotism. 
A service does not last more than ninety minutes. 
There is not always an offertory, many of the churches 
being largely supported by the individual members 



28o THE LAND OF PROMISE 

pledging themselves to pay an annual sum, payable 
in monthly instalments. When funds are needed for 
any special purpose, the church supporters are cir- 
cularised, their names being carefully entered in a 
ledger which records the sums given in answer to 
various appeals over a series of years. 

The stipends in the cities are always sufficient and 
usually generous. There are many pastors in cities 
like New York and Chicago who have a salary of 
from $10,000 to $20,000 a year, and these are men 
of such organising ability that they would certainly 
have earned more if they had gone into commercial 
life. It is a striking proof of the excellence of 
American preaching that the Brooklyn Daily Eagle 
prints two whole pages of Sunday sermons in its 
Monday issue. There is no difficulty in attracting 
men to church. 

One of the most carefully fostered departments of 
an institutional church is the Sunday-school, which 
suffers perhaps from over-organisation. There is 
such an endeavour to make the school feed the other 
departments that the true function of the school classes 
becomes obliterated, and attendance is sometimes 
made a condition of other privileges. 

The Sunday-school, like the American elementary 
school, takes its cue from the educational ' Doctrine 
of Interest.' The youngest children are grouped in 
kindergarten classes. In the junior and senior classes 



CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA 281 

blackboard work is extensively introduced. Map- 
making- is also encouraged, the children filling in 
maps week by week with, say, the missionary journeys 
of St. Paul. The children also collect pictures of places 
of Biblical interest, as well as botanical and geologi- 
cal specimens, the idea being to visualise the condi- 
tions of life in ancient times. In a well-equipped school 
there may be a department for training teachers. 

An American Sunday-school is not exclusively 
associated with the idea of childhood, provision being 
made for adult membership, while those who cannot 
attend regularly are known as 'home members,' and 
visited at intervals. The system of rewards and 
picnics is generally decried, it being considered that 
there is something wrong with the school methods 
if scholars have to be bribed to attend. There is 
always a Sunday-school library, kept distinct from 
the regular Church library. As to the building, the 
approved plan is for the school to be connected with 
the group of buildings which make up an institutional 
church. The class-rooms are often divided by roller 
partitions, which are raised for the opening and closing 
devotions. A portion of the surface of the roller 
partition is used as a blackboard. On week-days 
the class-rooms are used for various educational 
and social purposes. 

Connected with the Sunday-school are all the 
church agencies for young people : the gymnasia, 



282 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

with their physical culture classes ; the meetings of 
the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, and of the Daughters 
of the King ; the reading and sewing circles, the club 
for distributing plants and flowers, and the boys' 
brigade. There are evening classes for manual train- 
ing. The institutional church does not encroach 
upon the work of the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciations, which are rapidly developing into residential 
clubs for unmarried men of all ages. 

An institutional church touches life thoroughly on 
its social side. The church parlour, a cosily furnished 
and sunny room, is used for the minor gatherings. 
For the men the church does not hesitate to provide, 
even in the church basement, a bowling alley and 
a swimming bath ; while all reasonable athletic and 
quasi-sporting matters, including billiards, and even 
card-playing, are encouraged. The men have also 
their good citizenship clubs, village improvement 
societies, and Sunday evening assemblies. At all 
the larger social gatherings institutionalism is not 
content with cakes and coffee, but substantial meals 
are served on occasion, prepared in well-equipped 
church-kitchens. 

The library and reading-rooms are provided with 
comfortable chairs, newspaper racks, and writing 
tables. All the rooms are properly ventilated and 
heated. Everything is cheery, bright, and comfort- 
able. 



CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA 283 

An institutional church is in reality a large social 
club, based on the fundamental doctrine of Christian 
brotherhood. An American knows from childhood 
how to be interesting, and an institutional church 
is an attempt to organise all the sociable interests 
of daily life. 

Fellowship in this social club is conditional upon 
as genuine a church membership as it is possible 
to secure under individual circumstances. Every- 
body is accepted at his own valuation of respecta- 
bility, and the positive value of the sense of fellowship 
makes for a solid respectability, even if there were 
none before. The penalty of the backslider is the 
loss of the sense of brotherhood. The institutional 
church has something that will attract and interest 
every one, and when a man or woman is attracted 
and interested, there is much that tends to induce 
a larger activity. A man belongs to a church, 
because he feels that the church belongs to him. 
The church is a local unit, loosely related to other 
units. 

The success of the institutional church is perhaps 
primarily due to a phase of American democracy. 
Everybody wants to do the same thing, at the same 
time, and in the same way. Church members read 
the same books, but they are books that stand for 
culture. Church members have the same ideas, 
but they are broad and generous ideas relating to 



284 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

the national life. Church members, moreover, culti- 
vate bright, cheerful and optimistic manners by which 
they are personally distinguished in the community. 

The difficulties in the way of the evolution of this 
social Christianity may be compared with those that 
Rome encounters in Modernism. There are world- 
creakings and scandals that take place whenever the 
learned discover new truth and try to talk together 
with the masses who obviously cannot at first under- 
stand the niceties and the criticism of dogma. As a 
result of the new experience, there arises what has 
been called the New Theology, whose chief American 
exponents, long before Mr. R. J. Campbell, were 
Horace Bushnell and Dr. Theodore Munger. But 
at least nine-tenths of American evangelicals are im- 
pressed far more seriously by what may be called the 
New Experience than by what has come to be called 
the New Theology. In a sense American Christianity 
is all going forth in the light of a new experience 
and of new social vistas of work, without the people 
having been aware of any shifting whatsoever of the 
theological scenes. 

Yet all old dogmas have received anew, we doubt 
not, the oldest prophetic interpretation. The minister 
has a thousand and one new difficulties in the new 
labour of adjustment. He may not be much of a 
* modernist' himself, yet both to him and to his con- 
gregation there has been a grinding-down process as 



CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA 285 

to the doctrine, the ministerial life, and the practice 
of the congregation. He feels the implicit necessity 
of drawing out the palpable significance of life-sus- 
taining truths, and of leaving others to take care of 
themselves. There is a danger, however, of glorify- 
ing too greatly every increased sense of reality which 
the ^ new experience ' has stamped upon the meaning 
of an article of faith. If one dogma becomes a social 
experience he may be tempted to treat the rest as 
though they too were already perfectly adjusted with 
church experience. 

Meanwhile he is aided by the staff of eminent men 
of his own university and of all other American- 
minded scholars who are dragging the broad, 
palpable, human and scientific realities out of all 
the confusions, symbolisms, cloudinesses of the 
current dogmatic forms. No creeds are likely to be 
changed ; all are likely to be filled with new inter- 
pretations, which being based upon genuine human 
experiences, can never subsequently be undone. 



286 THE LAND OF PROMISE 



CHAPTER XVI 

SOCIAL CONVERSION 

The final and supreme question of American religion 
is, whether or not American religion is a social power 
of sufficient cogency to solve the grave problems 
which obstruct the true advance of American social 
life. 

I have made it a point to show that most evils in 
American civic life are, in a technical sense, the effects 
of want of assimilation of individuals and masses 
to true American ideals. That is, that they are in 
America but not o/" America. But in another sense, 
all Christian Ideals are so high that^ as a social 
religion, Christianity is, and always will be, a mes- 
sage of social conversion to the whole of mankind. 

To a new school of practical sociologists and 
psychologists in America religion is society's medi- 
cinal restorative, helping the nation to pull itself 
together again when it has run down in moral tone, 
or dissipated its strength, or in any sense failed to 
live by its highest standards. 

Religion is thus society's God-given power unto a 



SOCIAL CONVERSION 287 

grand, social resurgence engineered by its character- 
istic emotion of sorrow for sin, and moral recreation. 
Reputedly religion makes man immortal ; in reality 
religion makes society itself stable. Man, then, is 
really saved himself because his conversion, multi- 
plied in thousands of others, has saved society which 
bears him on along with itself. Society, then, in- 
cidentally, has thus assured the stability of the life- 
work of the individual man. The conversion and 
redemption of a man as a member of society is, in 
this quite realistic sense, the social world's own dis- 
tinctive aim at self-renewal. 

American democracy has always believed, as an 
article of its civic faith, that even after one hundred 
generations of slavish ancestors every white child 
born in America is one of God's noblemen, and equal 
to a king. America believes that the evil heredity of 
ages of slavehood is not transmitted to the child. It 
believes that the cramping, evil influence of past 
generations all goes to the winds by the mere fact 
that a child is born now in the free environment of 
American citizenship. 

This civic faith has allayed the * ghosts ' of an 
Ibsen who, in accord with the older physically neces- 
sitarian doctrine of heredity, pictured the personally 
acquired evil traits of a father as the cause of an 
evil inheritance of like evil traits in his son. The 
newer science, denying that acquired taints can ever 



288 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

be transmitted, aligns itself with the American 
instinctive view of the ineradicable nobility of man. 
The races which begot Isaiahs, Platos, Dantes, and 
Shakespeares are begetters of potential Isaiahs, 
Platos, Dantes, Shakespeares for ever. 

It is true that a coloured race cannot perfect itself 
into a white race ; neither can a modern white race 
become more perfect than, say, the ancient Greeks. 
But society, with its instruments of education and 
religion, can make a wonderful * best possible ' out of 
every race. It can restore all men to a level with all 
heroes and princes of past ages. If no man can then 
be advanced to what is not inborn in him, he can be 
preserved from contamination and debasement, and 
his powers can be made the most of. Every white 
child can, in the first place, be educated into a hero 
every whit as valiant as a Leonidas. If in after life 
he has fallen from social helpfulness, more education, 
more freedom, more religion can restore him into the 
state of the lost original grace. 

Humanity then is physically a more or less eternal 
fact. Society can draw the best, morally speaking, 
out of it. But society cannot physically improve it 
into a perfection it did not possess and exercise in past 
ages. Neither can it ever deprive it of its birthright 
of potential heroism and valour, and of the divine 
qualities of all the good and great men who have once 
graced the world. Hence sociology, as a practical 



SOCIAL CONVERSION 289 

science, is centred upon Social Heredity, the influence 
of diviner things upon every child from the moment 
it is born into the world. No child is ever, then, 
damned in the world otherwise than by an evil 
social environment, which of its nature is removable. 
Social, not physical heredity, is the true Original Sin. 

In the same line of arguing it can as reasonably be 
said : Segregate, and educate the children of all 
criminals, and a nation is as likely as not to find them 
grow up into saints. 

The notorious epileptic tendencies of drunkards' 
children are put down to a refinement of malnutrition 
rather than to heredity proper. The epileptic is here 
the * ill-fed ' progeny of a high stock, rather than, as the 
coloured child, the normal progeny of a low stock. 

Be that as it may, nearly all social debasement can 
be either prevented by training or sound education, 
or remedied by religious agencies if it has caught man 
within its toils. The scientific part of religion 
becomes thus the liberation of society from its own 
debasements or exaggerations or wanderings from 
the social right. All true religious emotion should 
tend towards civic patriotism and the comradeship of 
man. Individual man must be inwardly converted. 
In no other way can the social whole be saved except 
through the individual man who helps to make the 
whole. The sins of that social whole which is the 
American nation are mostly exaggerations due to 

T 



290 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

rapid growth, material progress, over-optimism, 
recklessness. 

Some social exaggerated ness or debasements had to 
happen in the days of the marchings of high-spirited 
America from its eastern seaboard towards the western 
shores of the continent, beaten by the waves of the 
Pacific Ocean. Dangerous social and civic exaggera- 
tions such as the outgrowth of riches, corrupt politi- 
cal organisations, economic social cleavage between 
citizens, laxities in city government, have been pro- 
vided against in advance in the healing power of the 
civic religion of America. Since a common democratic 
faith, not a community of race, created America as a 
nation ; therefore it can be asserted that the power 
which once created is a power which can redeem or 
re-create. 

The evils which a Henry George was the first to 
protest against may be all classified under the head 
of an excusable incompleteness in the due social 
solidarity and comradeship. They were considered 
to be excusable during the earthquaking, industrial 
expansion of America. 

The American civic faith of comradeship, equality, 
and the value of education, freedom, and religious 
regeneration, it is believed, will rectify the contortions 
and exaggerations of political, social, and economic 
growth in a new convergence towards fraternity driven 
by faith in a people-befriending God. 



SOCIAL CONVERSION 291 

In the name of the sacred ensign of this civic creed 
a Jehad or Holy War has been preached by the civic 
faithful against the disruptive social enemy unto his 
uttermost retreats. The social sins of labour unions, 
no less than the social sins of capitalistic combines, 
are equally warred upon in the name of the American 
civic divinity. The monopolist of commodities, no 
less than the iron-hearted fashion-monger aloof from 
common man, is equally under the ban of the newly- 
awakened social conscience. But the civic conver- 
sionists of America only preach to all the nation to 
repent unto the first civic fervour of all comradeship, 
in which, in the mind of the people, in the heroic 
days of the revolutionary simplicities, the Republic 
sprang forth into the world. 

Granted the attainment of civic conversion, then a 
victory for Social Unity is as assured as victory for 
Political Unity once was, when led by Lincoln in 
the Civil War. The problem in those days was, how 
out of forty States to effect one sovereign political 
national entity. The problem now is, how out of 
perhaps forty component white races to weld together 
one fraternal, co-operative social commonwealth. 

There is a civic Holy War proceeding in America 
which aims at winning this result. There is an intel- 
ligence department for the head staff of civic leaders 
and prophets which has sized-up the strength of the 
disruptive social forces. Its members have watched 



292 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

and marked the citadels of strength of bosses and 
corruption-mongers. This capable intelligence de- 
partment of the conflict is made up mostly of journal- 
istic pioneers like Lincoln Steffans, Ida Tarbell, 
Norman Hapgood, and Upton Sinclair — a group of 
magazine and book writers who have been likened 
collectively to the Muck Raker in PilgrMs Progress, 

Behind this clever reporting foray into the enemy's 
camp there are the more serious social scientists of 
ideal America. Embedded in rock foundations of 
world-surveys are teachers like Giddings, Lester 
Ward, Hadley, Wallace. Then there are specialist 
students like Mrs. Van Vorst, who with Miss Van 
Vorst masqueraded as factory-girls in order to learn 
the conditions of life of the workers ; fraternisers with 
tramps and hobos like Walter Wyckoff and Jack 
London ; John Spargo, a friend of the children in 
factories ; Sarah Moore, worker among immigrant 
labourers ; and also Veblen, Lloyd, Davenport, 
Rufus Sprague, Hugo Meyer, J. B. Clarke, Albion 
Small, Dr. Robert Hunter, the wealthy student of 
Poverty, and also Louise More. 

Backed by theoretical science and social observa- 
tion are the social seers like Josiah Strong, founder 
of the Social Service Institute, New York ; Washing- 
ton Gladden, organiser of the Institutional Church 
in Ohio, assailant of ^ plutocracy ' ; Jane Addams, 
founder of the Hull House Settlement in Chicago ; 



SOCIAL CONVERSION 293 

and others of equal fame in the religion of social 
reform such as Dr. H. Parkhurst, Walter Laidlaw, 
Dr. Jefferson, Dr. Felix Adler. Their writings 
mostly report typical experimentalism for the van- 
work of the general advance. Each so works towards 
simplification in the methods of social service that 
he may make it easy for all the world to follow 
suit. Meanwhile, the professors of all the universities 
are teaching the younger generation model con- 
ceptions of a nation of comradeship under the 
designation of the United States. They convert an 
army of recruits year by year in intendant church, 
civic, political, and even business careers. Out of the 
social ferment emerge the social champion leaders, 
captained by the political president, — one who after 
his present term of office is likely to remain the 
* educational president ' of America without the need 
of any third term formalities. Next after him we 
must place his Democratic rival Mr. W. J. Bryan, 
who if beaten for the presidency in the campaigns of 
1896 and 1900, is still, at the moment I write, the 
favourite of his party, and who is in any case a fore- 
most preacher of social justice in the United States. 
There are then great war captains throughout the 
land like Governor Johnson of Minnesota, Senator 
La Follette of Wisconsin, Governor Folk of Missouri, 
Mayor Johnson of Cleveland, Ohio, District-Attorney 
Jerome of New York. Each of these men is himself 



294 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

worth an army corps, and in their forays they have 
learned how to deal terrible blows against civic 
impiousness. 

Science and study of the model comradeship too 
has come in aid to a well-marshalled ministry and 
pastorate which can afford to meet together on the 
civic religion of America, when they have fulfilled all 
their duties of the spiritual religion of the churches. 

Among the captains from the churches are Lyman 
Abbott, Bishop Potter, Bishop Doane, Archbishop 
Ireland, Archbishop Ryan, Dr. Parkhurst, Henry 
Van Dyke. 

In parishes organised by the ' institutional church ' 
is found the prophetic model in miniature of a more 
fraternal and inter-cooperative United States. 

Then there are the great humane capitalists them- 
selves. The gigantic billion-dollar Steel Corporation 
which Andrew Carnegie founded has, at the time 
I write, itself started profit-sharing among its em- 
ployees. The Carnegies and Rockefellers them- 
selves have learned that the keenest of purchasable 
pleasures of life is in buying social solidifications by 
net cash gifts to libraries, universities, or institutes. 
Other capitalists like Louis Post, author of the 
familiar Grape-Nuts, and the owners of the National 
Cash Register Company of Dayton, Ohio, find their 
life's pleasure in the planning and ordering of model 
cities. 



SOCIAL CONVERSION 295 

Then there is the strategy of the rounding-in and 
enveloping process. The universities are perhaps 
ripe for a federation which will map out negations of 
nationalism, negations of civics, negations of social 
unification — all those existing social deficits and 
black patches, for scientific exhaustive scrutiny and 
ordered assailing and abolishment. It only wants 
some organising leader to bring the greater schools 
of America into line for the scientific welding together 
of their social comradeship. There are indeed civic 
federations, as the Citizens' Union, in all the cities, 
and one of these was answerable for the memorable 
Reform Government in New York City under Dr. 
Seth Low. There are working organisations more- 
over between all ordered religions and churches, like 
the Interchurch Federation Movement, which studies 
the big tenement population in New York and else- 
where, and helps each one to find his own church, 
and each church to find its own line of least resistance 
and sphere of social and moral activity. The same 
organisation is responsible for certain population 
studies in the crowded foreign settlements which 
led to a national stir. 

There is the New York State Conference of Re- 
ligion, where Christian and Jew (thank Heaven !) 
have learned to pray together, without surrendering 
their religious individuality, to the common God 
who made mankind. Above all, there is the great 



296 THE LAND OF PROMISE 

reunion of the twenty-nine million Evangelical Chris- 
tians in America. Since the conference of 1906, they 
have begun already to work together through a 
common council in a concerted policy. When mar- 
shalled in scientific order, they are likely to be an 
army of irresistible conquerors. 

There are, moreover, reunions between hitherto 
divided Presbyterians, and a movement to bring 
Methodists, Congregationalists and Presbyterians 
into close coherence. There are the great extra- 
scholastic educational campaigns such as that of 
Chatauqua. There is an ethical and educational 
afflatus running through the million-copied national 
monthlies of the Cosmopolitan^ Harper's^ Century^ 
McClure's Magazifies^ and the national weeklies 
like the Outlook^ the Independent^ and Collier's. 
At the time when I write there is a sweeping 
Temperance Movement, astir from coast to coast 
of America, which by the end of January 1908 has 
led to the halving of the number of criminal cases 
in one important American city, and, according to 
the official report of the Judge, cutting down the 
average by one-third in another city. 

Then there is the invincible army corps of comrade- 
ship, the Christian Endeavourers, the Y.M.C.A., 
and the Y.W.C.A., the Epworth League, and the 
Brotherhood of St. Andrew. 

The converging battlings of all these civic patriots 



SOCIAL CONVERSION 297 

is unto one great irresistible spiritual momentum 
which will through terrible warrings regenerate the 
entire social life of the United States. They are 
modelling in parvo around them the predestined 
Greater America of the mightier, holier, brotherlier 
comradeship which it seems America has been called 
into being to bring to pass for the world : — 

* If this people keep My covenant, they shall 
surely live for ever.' 

This covenant is the realisation of fraternity and 
comradeship between mankind in the higher national 
predestining in which God planted the United States 
among the nations ; and on the strength of the 
divine decree of comradeship, the nation may go 
forth ever, and prosper and reign. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



' Accommodation Train,' 63. 
Adams, Alva, 154. 
Addams, Jane, 292. 
Adventists, 117. 
Affability, American, 233. 
Agnosticism, 210, 242, 243. 
Albany, 28. 

Alexander the Great, 83. 
AUeghanies, 33. 
Amazons, 180. 
Ambassador, 91. 
American affability, 233. 
civic faith, 287. 
culture, 236. 
God, 245. 

ideal, origin of, 89, 90. 
idealism, 21, 23, 24, 25. 
Journalism {see Press). 
lay religion, 237. 
mind, 224. 

compared with British, 
218, 219. 
mythological faith, 234. 
nationalism, 91. 
thought, through objects, 215. 
intellectual independence 

of, 217. 
of Revolution days, 217. 
originality of, 216. 
positivism of, 231. 
pragmatical, 215, 216. 
American and British literature, 232. 
and British manners, 233. 



Americanism, 38. 

Americans, 32, 90. 

' Anarchasis Clootz,' 91. 

Angel de la Guarda, 181. 

Anglican establishments, 269. 

Anthology, American, 238. 

' Apostles' Creed of America,' 90. 

Appalachians, 3, 26. 

Architecture of churches, 278. 

Argentine Pass, 118. 

Arizona, 170. 

canyon, 174, 175. 
scenery of, 177. 
Arkansas, 13, 18. 
Atmospheric phenomena, 68, 69. 
Augustan imperialism, 88. 
Aurelian, 210. 
Australia, 89. 

Babylon, Long Island, 2. 
Baby worship, 128. 
Baldwin, J. M., 228. 
Baptismal controversy, 266. 
Baptist teaching, 266. 
Beaver River, 65. 
Berkshire Hills, 197. 
Bird City, 64. 
Bison (buffalo), 66. 
Boone, D., 34. 
Boonesborough, 34. 
Boreas Pass, 164. 
Boston, 235, 236. 
old road, 9. 

301 



302 



THE LAND OF PROMISE 



Bourbon whisky, 35. 

Bret Harte, 162. 

Bridges, 9. 

British and American literature, 

232. 
British Empire, 87, 88. 
Bronchos, 113. 
Brooklyn Bridge, 5. 
Bryan, W. J., 75, 293. 
Buffaloes, 61, 62, 66. 
Bushnell, H., 284. 

Cacti, 176. 
Califia, Queen, 180. 
California — 

Alta, 182. 

Baja, 180-2. 

configuration, 182, 183. 

fruitlands, 182, 183. 

missions, 181. 

scenery, 173, 174, 182, 183. 

trees, 173. 
Calvinism a social religion, 268. 
Camp Neosho, 115. 
Canadian sovereignty, 88. 

patriotism, S8. 
'Canonical gospels' of culture, 

236. 
Canyons, loi, 173. 

American, 173. 

Grand (Arizona), 170, 175-7. 

Royal Gorge, 164. 

scenery of, 177. 

Yosemite, 173. 
Capitalists, humane, 294. 
Captains (civic), from churches, 294. 
Carnegie, A., 294. 
Carthage, 83. 
Cash Register Co. , 294. 
Catholic culture, 244, 245. 

priests, 245. 



Catholic schools, 71. 
Catholics in Nebraska, 70. 
Catskills, 2, 27. 
Cavaliers, 226. 
Chatauqua, 134. 

at Boulder, 135. 
Chesapeake Bay, 27. 
Chicago — 

' bulls and bears,' 54. 

capital of capitals, 50. 

centre of circle of cities, 51. 

extent of, 55. 

fluctuations in commerce, 53. 

imperial position of, 52. 

individualism, 55. 

railway junctionof America, 52. 

reforming centre, 54. 

religious emotionalism, 54. 

social derelicts, 54. 

weather, 53. 

world-mart, 50. 
Child life, 127. 

impressions of, 55-8. 

in Nebraska, 74. 
Christianity, American, 265, 285. 

compared with Comteism, 265. 
Churchmen, culture of, 245. 
Cities, 26. 
Citizens, 92. 
Citizens' Alliance, 295. 
Citizenship, 84. 
Civic beauty, 214. 

comradeship, 83. 

militancy, 108, 109. 

theocracy, 89. 
Civic Religion, 97, 98, 99, 126. 

* Book of Judges,' 202. 

' Call of the Nation,' 201. 

creative days of, 200. 

' development of doctrine,' 203. 

faith, 207, 287. 



INDEX 



303 



Civic Religion — 

' higher criticism ' of, 207. 

humanism, 204. 

its * covenant,' 204. 

its ' patriarchs,' 202. 

positivism of, 207. 

unsectarianism of, 206. 
Civil War, 94, 95. 
Coast-line, 26. 
Collegiate Peaks, 1 13. 
Colonies, English, 31, 32. 

French, 21, 31. 
Colonisation, 93, 94. 
Colonisation of Central States, 32, 

41-3- 
Colorado, 99, 126. 

agriculture, 136. 

canyons of, lOl. 

Capitol, 103. 

Centennial State, 99. 

Cripple Creek, II2. 

Denver, 103. 

description of, 99. 

epitome of America, 126. 

Gilpin County, 112. 

High Schools, 136. 

industries, 112. 

mines, II2. 

mountain approaches, 99-101. 

scenery, iii. 

schools, 134-6. 

School of Mines, 136, 137. 

universities, 136. 

vistas, 102. 

Woman's Suffrage in, 15 1-8. 
{see also Denver). 
Colorado River, 175-7. 
Colour problem, 80, 82. 
Commercial supremacy, fight for, 

20. 
* Common man,' cult of, 215-17. 



Compromises, 93. 

' Comrade America,' 127, 128. 

* Cosmos,' 127-9. 
Comstock Mine, 171. 
Coney Island, 4. 
Connecticut Valley, 197, 198. 
Constantine, 84, 85. 

gift of (legendary), 210. 
Constitution, 92. 
Constitutive Assembly, 93. 
Cortez, 181. 
County Fair, 49. 
' Covenant ' of America, 297. 
Creed revision, 294. 
Cripple Creek, 112. 
Crises, science of, 97, 98. 

of federalism, 92. 

political, 94. 

social, 96, 97. 
Criticism of traditional faith, 208. 
Croker, Chief, 104. 
Cult of good-humour, 244. 
Culture, American, 235. 

gospel of, 236. 

in Nebraska, 74. 

of Boston, 235, 236. 

of Catholics, 255. 

of churchmen, 255. 

of New England, 236. 

of San Francisco, 235. 

Dalhart, 179. 
Dana's Before the Mast, 183. 
Death Valley, 171. 
Democracy, faith of, 287. 

in Nebraska, 71, 72. 
Denver (city), 102, 103. 

Brown Palace Hotel, 103. 

Cathedral, 103. 

chief of police, 104. 

civic charter, 104, 153. 



304 



THE LAND OF PROMISE 



Denver city government, 104, 105. 1 

'corruption,' 105. 

High Schools, 135. 

journey from, 164. 

journey to, 77. 

press, 255, 256. 

university, 136. 
Deseret, first Mormon settlement 

in Utah, 168. 
Desert world, 161 -3. 
Devery, ex-chief of New York 

police, 243. 
Dewey, Professor, 215. 
Divinity of Christ affirmed, 277. 
Domestic Economy, 152, 153, 154. 

life, 142. 
'Dooley, Mr.,' 257. 
Dutch, influence of, 213. 

Eastern Empire, 85. 
Economic union, 95. 
Education (American) — 

arithmetic, 131. 

Boulder Chatauqua, 134. 

Chatauqua, 133. 

classics, 132. 

elocution, 132. 

geography, 131. 

history, 131. 

home, 128. 

natural history, 130. 

religious, 200 ff. 

science of mathematics, 132. 

teachers, 134. 
Edwards, J., 204. 
Elections in Colorado, 151. 
Emerson, 217. 

English and American thought, 
217, 218. 

settlements, 30. 

social authority, 218. 



Entrance to the United States, 44. 
Epileptics, 228. 
Erie Canal, 36. 
Ethics, Christly, 224. 

of common people, 223. 
of Tammany, 223. 
Evangelical Christianity, 229, 270, 

273- 
Evangelicals, influence of, 227. 
Evergreen, 114- 16. 
Exaggerations of American life, 200. 
Experimentalism, social, 293. 
Experimental physiology, 239. 

Falls of Niagara, 44, 45. 
Farms in Nebraska and Kansas, 66, 

67, 68. 
Federal authority, 19. 

British, 88. 
Federation, Interchurch, 295. 
Fire Island, i, 2. 
Fires, 3. 

prairie, 62. 
Folk, Governor, 107. 
Fontanet, 37. 
Foreigners, 79, 80, 81. 

in European countries, 81. 

in the Argentine, 81. 
Fortune builders, 149. 
Franklin (Indiana), 46-9. 
Fraternity, 90, 91. 
French explorers, 28. 

policy, 29. 
Friendly societies, 263. 
Front Range, 102, 117. 

Gaiety, religious, 247. 

Gamblers, 106. 

Game, 113. 

Geological vistas, 45, lOO. 

George iii., 31, 32. 



INDEX 



305 



George, Hemy, 191, 290. 
Georgetown (Col.), 116. 
German colonists, 42. 

culture, 334. 
Gilpin County, 112. 
Girl, American — 

amusements, 144. 

as traveller, 144. 

at Oxford, 144. 

book-learning, 145. 

comportment, 143. 

culture of, 244. 

in the household, 146. 

leadership of, 144. 

needs of, 144. 
Gladden, Washington, 292, 
'God of America,' the, 239, 241, 

245. 
Golden Gate Park, 187. 
Good-humour, cult of, 239-41, 245. 
Grand Canyon of Arizona, 174. 
Great American Desert, 63. 
Great Inland Basin, 163. 

description, 169. 

scenery, 170. 
Great Salt Lake, 163, 164. 
Greek worship, 234. 

Hallett, Judge Moses, 155. 
Hatteras, Cape, 27. 
Havemeyer Point, 2, 3. 
Hellenism, 83. 
Heredity, social, 287. 
Herndon, 71. 

' High Altar of America,' the, 123. 
High Constable, need of, iii. 
' Holy Lands' of America, 160. 
Holy Roman Empire, 87. 
' Holy Society,' 267. 
•Holy War,' 291. 
Hudson River, 6. 



Hull House, 292. 
Humboldt River, 172. 
Hunter, Dr. R., 292. 

Ibsen, 288. 

Idealism of America, 213, 214, 215, 

248. 
Illinois, 37. 
Indiana, 46. 
Indian shields, 115. 
Individuality, 90, 218. 
Industrial civilisation, 208. 
Institutional Church, 277-83. 

architecture, 278. 

clubs, 282. 

definition, 277. 

fellowship, 283. 

influence of, 282. 

sermons, 279. 

service, 279. 

stipends, 280. 

success in, 283. 

Sunday-schools, 280, 281. 
Institutionalism, American, 248. 
' Intelligence department,' social, 

292. 
Inter-church federation, 295. 
Iowa, 60. 
Irrigation, 67, 113, 137, 181, 182. 

Jamaica Bay, 4. 

James, Dr. W., 215, 228, 229. 

Janissaries, 168. 

'Jehad,' preaching a, 291. 

Jerome, Attorney, 105. 

Jesuits, 181. 

Jew and Christian, 295. 

Jews in New York, 17. 

Journalism {see Press). 

Judge in Kansas, 64. 

Justinian, 85. 



U 



5o6 



THE LAND OF PROMISE 



Kansas, 41. 
Kentucky, 33, 37. 
industries, 40. 
Kidd, Captain, 1. 
King, Clarence, 185. 

Ladies' Guild, 244. 
Lakes — 

Carson Sink, 172. 

Great Salt, 163, 164, 169, 170. 

Humboldt Sink, 172. 

Mono, 172. 

Ontario, 44. 

Owen, 172. 

Sevier, 170. 

Utah, 165. 
Lanier, S., 27, 237. 
Leadville, 112, 164. 
Liberties of cities, 84. 
Life, origin of, 229. 
Lincoln, A., 207, 224. 
Literature of West, and religion, 

232. 
Loeb, J., 229. 
Long Island, 1-3. 
Long's Peak, 120. 
Los Angeles, 182. 
Louisiana Purchase, 36, 94. 
Low, Seth, 220, 221, 295. 
Lucile of Owen Meredith (Lord 

Lytton), 237. 
Lumber-men, 244. 

Mach, E., 229. 
Madison, J., 93. 
Manhattan {see New York). 

Beach, 5. 
Manitoba, %%. 
Matthews, A., 228. 
Methodists, 276. 
Michigan, 40. 



Middle Ages, 85. 

Mid West, 39. 

Mind of America, 247, 248. 

Miners, 116, 136. 

Missions of California, 181, 182. 

Mississippi River, 59. 

basin, 38, 39, 41. 
Missouri River, 59-61. 
Money-making, 248. 
Moore, S., 292. 
Moral authority, 219. 
' Morgan's Raid,' 48. 
Mormons — 

Edmund's Act, 168. 

education, 167. 

found Salt Lake City, 168. 

industry, 165, 167. 

parody of the States, 166. 

propaganda, 168. 

settle at Deseret, 168. 

theocracy of, 167. 
Mountain scenery, 120, 124. 
Mountains — 

Adirondacks, 27. 

Alleghanies, 33. 

Appalachians, 2, 26. 

Catskills, 3, 27. 

Fairweather, 185. 

Front Range, 116. 

Holy Cross, 1 14. 

Independence, 115. 

Nebo, 165. 

Rockies, 78, 99 ff. 

St. Elias, 185. 

San Bernardino, 184. 

San Francisco, 174, 178. 

Sangre de Cristo, 114. 

San Juan, 122. 

Shasta, 184. 

Sierra Nevadas, 172, 184, 
185. 



INDEX 



307 



Mountains — 

Torrey's Peak, 118. 

Uintah, 120. 

Wasatch, 165. 

Whitney, 184. 
Moxom, Dr. Ph., 272. 
' Muck- Rakers,' 292. 
Muir, J., 185. 
Munger, Th., 284. 
Muses and Graces, 138. 
Mysticism, 229. 
Mythology, 234. 

Nation, cradling of, 82, 
National ideal of America, 81. 

productivity, 222. 
Nationalism, American, 79, 91. 
Nebraska, 58, 68. 
Nevada, 171. 
New Amsterdam, 30. 
New England — 

historians, 213. 

influence, 213. 

journey to, 117. 

scenery, Il8. 
New experience, 284. 
New Jersey, 26. 
New Orleans, 35. 
New theology, 284. 
New York (Manhattan)— 

ambitions, 19. 

approach, 7. 

Broadway, 9. 

business methods, 23. 

Central Park, 9. 

civic dignity, 8. 

entrance, 7. 

extent, 8. 

Fifth Avenue, 9. 

finance, 10. 

Germans, 18. 



New York — 

government, 15. 

growth, 9. 

home circles, 23. 

Italians 17. 

Jews, 17. 

lawyers, 1 1. 

magnates, 15. 

manners, 22. 

newspapers, 14. 

openings from, 27. 

outlook, 18. 

population, 16. 

port, 13. 

public life, 21. 

publishers, 14, 15. 

railways, 13, 14. 

romance of, 25. 

shops, 12. 

situations in, 25. 

sky-scrapers, 8. 

social fabric, 15. 

streets, 9. 

supremacy, 10. 

telegraphs, 14. 

theatres, 15. 

trust companies, ii. 

universal providers, 12. 

wholesale trade, 12. 
Niagara Falls, 44, 45. 

Oak Island, 1-3. 

Ocean front, 26. 

Ogden, 169. 

Ohio River, 34. 

' Ordinary man,' the, 221, 223, 245. 

' Original Sin ' (social), 289. 

Packing Centres, 42. 
Painted desert, 178. 
Palpablists, 225-31. 



3o8 



THE LAND OF PROMISE 



Parousia of German gods, 233. 

Pasadena, 182. 

Pastors, 248. 

Patten, Dr. S. N., 226. 

Philadelphia, 235. 

Phoenix, 178. 

Physiology, 230. 

Pilgrims, 202. 

Pioneers, 33-6. 

Plains, filling in of, 33. 

Plutocrats, 222. 

Poets, 237. 

Population, 89. 

Post, Louis, 294. 

Pragmatism, 215. 

Prairies, 59-78. 

Presbyterians, 274, 276. 

Press, American, 250. 

a social medium, 250. 

creative note of, 256. 

daily curriculum of, 257, 258, 
260. 

English, 253. 

Evening Post, 251. 

humour of, 256, 257. 

Impressionism of, 251, 252. 

in great cities, 256. 

in towns, 250. 

'leaders,' 254, 255. 

New York Journal, 252, 254, 
255, 264. 

of Denver, 256. 

of Nebraska, 75. 

of New York, 14. 

reading public, 251, 253, 254. 

Sunday papers, 260. 

The Denver Republican, 262, 
263. 

The Outlook, 263, 264. 

' Yellow,' 255. 
Protestantism, 265. 



Protestantism, expansion of. 268, 

269. 
Provinces of Greater Britain, 88. 
Psychology, religious, 228. 
Puritan Democracy, 87, 201, 205, 

213. 

home, 226. 

piety, 227. 

protection of women, 226. 
Puritanism, 108. 

American, 271. 

Biblical, 269. 

humanised, 270. 

new, 273. 
Puritans, 103. 

Races of America, S0-3. 
Racial antipathies, 80. 
Railways — 

'air-line' to Leadville(Colorado 
Southern), 164. 

Burlington, 58. 

Denver and Rio Grande, 164. 

Gould System, 170. 

New York Central, 13. 

Pennsylvania, 13. 

Southern Pacific, 172. 
Rainsford, Dr. W., 277. 
Reclamation service, 6*1. 
Rectors, 245. 
Referendum, 153. 
Reform Government, 295. 
Religion a social reaction, 286. 

American lay, 234, 235. 

French, 234. 

Greek, 234. 

Italian, 234. 
Religion in Nebraska, *]o, 7^- 

as a decoration, 208. 

assails commercialism, 211. 

compared with play-going, 209. 



INDEX 



309 



energy of, 210. 

sanctioned by capitalism, 210. 

social conversion, 211, 286. 

strength of, 211. 

sun-worship, 210. 
Religious Education, 200-5. 

experience, 277. 

psychology, 228. 

realism, 117, 118. 

sentiment, 208. 

worship (lay), 239. 
Republican River, 69. 
Revolutionary War, 32. 
Riis, J., 222, 241. 
Rivers — 

Arkansas, 138. 

Connecticut, 198. 

Hudson, 7. 

Humboldt, 172. 

Mississippi, 59. 

Missouri, 59-61. 
Rockefeller, J. D., 139. 
Rocky Mountains, 78, 114. 
Roman Empire, 84. 

religion, 85. 
Roosevelt, Theodore, 21, 221. 

' Educational President,' 293. 

ethical teacher, 97, 223, 224. 

in Denver, 107. 

visit to Nebraska, 75. 
RuefF, A., no. 
Ruskin's books, 74. 

Sachem, 220. 
Sacramento, 184. 
Sacramento Valley, 183, 185. 
St. Francis (town), 63-5. 

(Saint), 196, 245. 
St. Lawrence, 28. 
Saints, psychology of, 288. 
Salton overflow, 182. 



Saloons tabooed, 73. 

San Bernardino, 184. 

San Diego, 182. 

San Francisco (mountains), 174,178. 

San Francisco (city) — 

Bay of, 183, 185. 

churches, 194. 

contrasts to New England, 191. 

corruption, 191. 

culture of, 235. 

development of, 191, 192. 

ferry, 186. 

freedom from cranks, 190. 

Golden Gate Park, 187, 188. 

great fire, 188, 189. 

ideal of, 194. 

inland waters, 186. 

insurance difficulties, 189. 

interpretation needed, 195. 

irresponsibility of, 193. 

Market street, 186, 187. 

Mayor Taylor, 195. 

Nob Hill, 187, 189. 

possible reformation, 196. 

Presidio, 187. 

rebuilding of, 195. 

religion, 190, 194. 

residential streets, 188. 

site, 155. 

spontaneity, 190. 

streets, 185. 

Tamalpais, 188. 

Vigilance Committees, 1 10, 
190. 

water-works, 189. 
Sangre de Cristo mountains, 114. 
San Joaquim, 183, 184. 
San Juan, 122. 
San Pedro harbour, 183. 
Santa Anna, 182. 
Santa Catalina, 183. 



3IO 



THE LAND OF PROMISE 



Scandinavians, 125. 
Scenery of Arid West, 160. 

of California, 182-9. 

of canyons, 175-7. 

of Connecticut Valley, 198. 

of Great Salt Lake, 169, 170. 

of mountains, 120. 

of plains, 121. 
Schools public, 200. 

doctrine of interest, 131, 280. 

influenced by children, 130. 

system, 135. 
Seaboard (eastern), 26. 
Seattle, 185. 
Seer of Patmos, 122. 
Sermons, 279. 

Servant girls, romance of, 72. 
Servants, 143. 
Settlements, 94. 
Shakespeare, 232. 
Shasta mountain, 185. 
Ship subsidies, 20. 
' Short statement,' the, 274. 
Sierra Madres, 183. 
Sierra Nevadas, 172, 173, 183, 184. 
Silver Plume, 118. 
Sinclair, Upton, 54. 
Sky-scrapers, 8. 
Slave paternalism, 37. 
Smith, Joseph, 167. 
Social authority, 218. 

conversion, 286. 

crises, 96, 97. 

distinctions, 71-3. 

experimentalism, 293. 

Heredity, 287. 

scientists, 292. 

Service Institute, of, 292. 
unity, 291. 
Societies, friendly, 262. 
Society, science of, 227. 



Soul of empire, 85. 
South, the, 235. 
South Africa, 87. 
Southern industrialism, 124, 
Spanish Trail, 171. 
Sport, 244. 
Spring, 76. 
Springfield (Mass.), 198. 

arsenal, 198. 

population, 199. 

preachers, 199. 

scenery, 198. 

street railways, 198. 
Staked plain, 179. 
State-rights, 94. 
States, 96. 
Stipends, 279. 
Stock, 42. 

Sunday observance, 272. 
Sunday schools, 280, 281. 

Tacoma, 185. 
Tammany Hall, 220, 221. 
Teachers, 134. 
Telesis, 227. 
Temperance, 73, 272. 
Texas, 179. 
Theocracy, 181. 
Toronto, 44. 
Torrey's Peak, 118-23. 
Trans- Missouri, 60. 

Undergraduates, 113. 
Union, the, 89, 95, 96. 
Unitarian Revolt, 206. 
United States, picture of, 26. 
Unity of America, 125, 
Universities, 136, 224, 225. 
Urbanity, American, 233. 
Utah, 165-170. 
scenery, 166. 



INDEX 



311 



Utah, compared with Holy Land, 
165. 

Van Dyke, J. C, 178. 
Van Vorst, Mrs,, 292, 
Vigilance Committees, no, 190. 
Virginia statesmen, 200. 
Voters, 152. 

Wadkin's Ferry, 33. 
Walker, A. B,, 254. 
' War Captains,' (civic), 293. 
War of Independence, 31. 
Ward, Lester, 227, 228. 
Wasatch Range, 165. 
Washington, George, 32, 235. 
Waterways, 35, 36. 
Wellesley College, 148, 149. 
Western America, lands, 159, 160. 
Westminster Confession, revision of, 

274. 
West Virginia, 39, 40. 
Wheeler, Dr. B. J., 133. 
Whitman, W., 237. 
Wilderness Road, 34. 
Wilson, Woodrow, 213. 
Woman's Suffrage, 151 -8. 

answer to critics of, 155-7. 

clubs, 153. 

colleges of, 148. 

critics of, 155. 



Woman — 

emancipation of, 149. 

independence of, 149, 150. 

in Eastern States, 157. 

occupations of, 157. 

social position of, 1 50. 

votes, 152. 
Women of West, 141-S. 

comportment, 143. 

culture, 143. 

domestic architecture, 142. 

domestic habits, 142. 

'freemasonry,' 143. 

household ministrations, 146. 

individuality of, 147. 

literary clubs, 146. 

matriarch, 147. 

prophetesses, 146, 147. 

soul-contrasts, 148. 
World-seers — 

Emerson, 217. 

Henry George, 191. 
' World-spirit,' 239, 240, 243. 
Wyoming, 42, 174. 

'Yellow Press,' 255. 
Yellowstone Park, 174. 
Young America, 127-129. 

mind of, 246, 247. 
Young, Brigham, 167, 168. 

Zones of trees, 173. 



Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
at the Edinburgh Univer<;ity Press 



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